| Title | Researchers Create a Rechargeable Fluoride-Ion Battery That Works at Room Temperature | |
| Date | Sunday December 09 2018, @09:43AM | |
| Author | martyb | |
| Topic | ||
| from the also-prevents-cavities dept. | ||
Focusing on the negative is good when it comes to batteries
Imagine not having to charge your phone or laptop for weeks. That is the dream of researchers looking into alternative batteries that go beyond the current lithium-ion versions popular today. Now, in a new study appearing in the journal Science, chemists at several institutions, including Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech for NASA, as well as the Honda Research Institute and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, have hit on a new way of making rechargeable batteries based on fluoride, the negatively charged form, or anion, of the element fluorine.
"Fluoride batteries can have a higher energy density, which means that they may last longer -- up to eight times longer than batteries in use today," says study co-author Robert Grubbs, Caltech's Victor and Elizabeth Atkins Professor of Chemistry and a winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. "But fluoride can be challenging to work with, in particular because it's so corrosive and reactive."
In the 1970s, researchers attempted to create rechargeable fluoride batteries using solid components, but solid-state batteries work only at high temperatures, making them impractical for everyday use. In the new study, the authors report at last figuring out how to make the fluoride batteries work using liquid components -- and liquid batteries easily work at room temperature. "We are still in the early stages of development, but this is the first rechargeable fluoride battery that works at room temperature," says Simon Jones, a chemist at JPL and corresponding author of the new study.
[...] The key to making the fluoride batteries work in a liquid rather than a solid state turned out to be an electrolyte liquid called bis(2,2,2-trifluoroethyl)ether, or BTFE. This solvent is what helps keep the fluoride ion stable so that it can shuttle electrons back and forth in the battery. Jones says his intern at the time, Victoria Davis, who now studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, was the first to think of trying BTFE. While Jones did not have much hope it would succeed, the team decided to try it anyway and were surprised it worked so well.
Room Temperature Cycling of Metal Fluoride Electrodes: Liquid Electrolytes for High Energy Fluoride-Ion Cells (DOI: 10.1126/science.aat7070) (DX)
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printed from SoylentNews, Researchers Create a Rechargeable Fluoride-Ion Battery That Works at Room Temperature on 2024-04-18 10:44:27