A collaborative group of six researchers from Stony Brook University and Brookhaven National Laboratory are using pioneering x-ray techniques to build a better and more efficient battery.

The researchers—four of whom are active ECS members, including Esther Takeuchi, Kenneth Takeuchi, Amy Marschilok, and Kevin Kirshenbaum—have recently published their internal mapping of atomic transformations of the highly conductive silver matrix formation within lithium-based batteries in the journal Science.

(PS: You can find more of these scientists’ cutting-edge research by attending the 228th ECS Meeting in Phoenix, where they will be giving presentations. Also, Esther Takeuchi will be giving a talk at this years Electrochemical Energy Summit.)

This from Stony Brook University:

In a promising lithium-based battery, the formation of a silver matrix transforms a material otherwise plagued by low conductivity. To optimize these multi-metallic batteries—and enhance the flow of electricity—scientists need a way to see where, when, and how these silver, nanoscale “bridges” emerge. In the research paper, the Stony Brook and Brookhaven Lab team successfully mapped this changing atomic architecture and revealed its link to the battery’s rate of discharge. The study shows that a slow discharge rate early in the battery’s life creates a more uniform and expansive conductive network, suggesting new design approaches and optimization techniques.

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“Scientific discovery is a marathon, not a sprint. Sometimes you’re running faster or slower, but you always have to keep going.”
Esther Takeuchi

Esther Takeuchi was the key contributor to the battery system that powers life-saving cardiac defibrillators.

She currently holds more than 150 U.S. patents, more than any other American woman, which earned her a spot in the Inventors Hall of Fame. Her innovative work in battery research also landed her the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2008.

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With the recent surge in wearable electronics, researchers and looking for a way to get larger amounts of power to these tiny devices. Due to the limited size of these devices, it is difficult to transmit data via the small battery.

Now, MIT researchers have found a way to solve this issue by developing an approach that can deliver short but big bursts of power to small devices. The development has the potential to affect more than wearable electronics through its ability to deliver high power in small volumes to larger-scale applications. The key to this new development is the team’s novel supercapacitor.

This from MIT:

The new approach uses yarns, made from nanowires of the element niobium, as the electrodes in tiny supercapacitors (which are essentially pairs of electrically conducting fibers with an insulator between). In this new work, [Seyed M. Mirvakili] and his colleagues have shown that desirable characteristics for such devices, such as high power density, are not unique to carbon-based nanoparticles, and that niobium nanowire yarn is a promising an alternative.

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Researchers from various institutes across Korea have found a way to nearly double the life of the lithium-ion battery.

In an ever-pressing race to create a more efficient and longer-lasting battery for electronics, researchers across the globe are looking toward alternative materials to make the li-ion battery stronger. A team of researchers associated with Samsung’s Advanced Institute of Technology, including ECS member Jang Wook Choi, have combined silicon and graphene to yield an amazing increase in lithium-ion battery efficiency.

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With the demand for hand-held electronics at an all-time high, the costs of the materials used to make them are also rising. That includes materials used to make lithium batteries, which is a cause for concern when projecting the development of large-scale grid storage.

In order to find an alternative solution to the high material costs connected with lithium batteries, the researchers at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) and the Institute of Physics at the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing have begun focusing their attention on sodium-ion batteries.

The science around sodium-ion batteries dates back to the 1980s, but the technology never took off due to resulting low energy densities and short life cycles.

However, the new research looks to combat those issues by improving the properties of a class of electrode materials by manipulating their electron structure in the sodium-ion battery.

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While working on a unique lithium-germanide battery, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) researchers knew something was happening inside the battery to dramatically increase its energy storage capacity, but they couldn’t see it. With no way to analyze the reaction occurring, the researchers could not understand the process. In order to solve the problem, the researchers developed a novel nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) technique to allow insight and understanding of the electrochemical reactions taking place in the battery. Essentially, they have developed an NMR “camera.”

In the end, this leaves the scientists with not only a novel lithium-germanide battery with a distinctly high energy density, but also an NMR device that can be used to examine reactions as they happen inside the battery.

This from PNNL:

By using the NMR process to look inside the battery and observe this reaction as it happened, the scientists found a way to protect the germanium from expanding and becoming ineffective after it takes on lithium. The secret proved to be forming the germanium into tiny “wires” and encasing them in small, protective carbon tubes to limit the expansion. This technique significantly stabilizes battery performance. Without embedding germanium in carbon tubes, a battery performs well for a few charging-discharging cycles, but fades rapidly after that. Using the “core-shell” structure, however, the battery can be discharged and charged thousands of times.

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Recently, scientists have been looking at the Japanese paper-folding art of origami as inspiration for novel flexible energy-storage technologies. While there have been breakthroughs in battery flexibility, there has yet to be a successful development of stretchable batteries. Now, researchers from Arizona State University have unveiled a way to make batteries stretch, yielding big potential outcomes for wearable electronics.

The Arizona State University research team includes ECS member and advisor of the ECS Valley of the Sun student chapter, Candace K. Chan. Chan and the rest of the team were inspired by a variation of origami called kirigami when developing this new generation of lithium-ion batteries.

According to the researchers, the new battery can be stretched more than 150 percent of its original size and still maintain full functionality.

ECS treasurer E.J. Taylor (Founder & CTO of Faraday Technology), recently forwarded us a story from The Economist featuring ECS members and their contributions to research and development on the ever-improving lithium-ion battery.

Since the battery’s commercialization by Sony in the early 1990s, the lithium-ion battery has improved to produce better laptops, smartphones, and even power electric cars.

Vincent Battaglia, ECS member and head of the Electrochemical Technologies Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, states that the lithium-ion battery “is almost an ideal battery.” With its light weight and recharging capabilities, the battery has received much attention from researchers globally.

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Stanford University researchers have developed a new “designer carbon” that can be fine-tuned for a variety of applications, including energy storage and water filters.

The newly developed carbon material has shown that it can significantly improve the power delivery rate of supercapacitors and boost the performance of energy storage technologies.

“We have developed a ‘designer carbon’ that is both versatile and controllable,” said Zhenan Bao, past member of ECS and the senior author of the study. “Our study shows that this material has exceptional energy-storage capacity, enabling unprecedented performance in lithium-sulfur batteries and supercapacitors.”

(PS: Check out some of Bao’s past papers in the Digital Library!)

Not only is the new carbon an improvement over existing versions, it also has a huge potential scope and is inexpensive to produce.

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ECS’s job board keeps you up-to-date with the latest career opportunities in electrochemical and solid state science. Check out the latest openings that have been added to the board.

P.S. Employers can post open positions for free!

Senior Manager, External Technology
Energizer – Westlake, Ohio
Candidate is required to establish agreements and negotiate contracts with technology leaders including companies (public, private and start-up) and universities and national laboratories. Contracts will be vetted internally with line management and legal prior to executing.

Electrochemistry Senior Engineer
Johnson Controls – Milwaukee, WI
The electrochemists uses his/her knowledge and understanding of the chemical and/or electrochemical processes that occur during the conversion of materials in the active masses of a battery, and how these phenomena affect battery performance under different applications, to recommend design or component changes to target performance specifications.

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