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Title    Engineers Design a Pure Lithium Anode
Date    Monday July 28 2014, @03:49PM
Author    azrael
Topic   
from the dept.
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/07/28/1229222

lhsi writes:

Engineers have designed a way to use lithium as the anode component of a battery (abstract), potentially allowing for smaller and lighter batteries with more power.

All batteries have three basic components: an electrolyte to provide electrons, an anode to discharge those electrons, and a cathode to receive them.

Today, we say we have lithium batteries, but that is only partly true. What we have are lithium ion batteries. The lithium is in the electrolyte, but not in the anode. An anode of pure lithium would be a huge boost to battery efficiency.

"Of all the materials that one might use in an anode, lithium has the greatest potential. Some call it the Holy Grail," said Yi Cui, a professor of Material Science and Engineering and leader of the research team. "It is very lightweight and it has the highest energy density. You get more power per volume and weight, leading to lighter, smaller batteries with more power."

But engineers have long tried and failed to reach this Holy Grail.

"Lithium has major challenges that have made its use in anodes difficult. Many engineers had given up the search, but we found a way to protect the lithium from the problems that have plagued it for so long," said Guangyuan Zheng, a doctoral candidate in Cui's lab and first author of the paper.

In addition to Zheng, the research team includes Steven Chu, the former U.S. Secretary of Energy and Nobel Laureate who recently resumed his professorship at Stanford.

"In practical terms, if we can improve the capacity of batteries to, say, four times today's, that would be exciting. You might be able to have cell phone with double or triple the battery life or an electric car with a range of 300 miles that cost only $25,000 - competitive with an internal combustion engine getting 40 mpg," Chu said.

Links

  1. "lhsi" - https://soylentnews.org/~lhsi/
  2. "designed a way to use lithium as the anode component of a battery" - http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-07/ssoe-sta072514.php
  3. "abstract" - http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nnano.2014.152.html

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