Battery-operated electrical devices keep growing their place in our daily lives with technological developments. Laptop computers, mobile phones, smartphones, tablets and even automobiles can work with electric batteries today. This escalates the global competition to produce high-capacity and durable batteries.
Producing durable and highly efficient batteries is crucial to protect both production costs, consumer benefit and the environment. Researchers have worked for this purpose at the University of California at San Diego to increase the efficiency of batteries. As a result of the studies, a breakthrough has been made on lithium-ion batteries, which can greatly increase energy density.
University of California engineers has come up with two extremely promising paths in their quest for next-generation battery technology. One of them is to use solid-state electrolytes instead of liquid ones. The other one is to add silicon to the anode component to increase its energy density. A newly developed architecture combines these two innovations in a single device to create a solid-state battery that is safe, long-lasting and has the potential to store large amounts of energy.
The key idea is to combine or completely replace the graphite used as the anode with silicon to potentially store up to 10 times the lithium ions. But at the same time, the silicon causes the liquid electrolyte to deteriorate rapidly and therefore the battery to deteriorate rapidly. But the researchers of this new study believe the solution may be using a solid-state electrolyte instead.
One week lasting phone charge
Solid-state electrolytes are another branch of battery research that could open up some exciting possibilities like silicon anodes. The conventional liquid electrolyte, which carries lithium ions back and forth between the anode and the cathode, the other electrode of the battery, limits compatibility with other possible and high-performance materials such as lithium metal and it is highly volatile. Solid-state electrolytes are emerging as a promising solution to this problem.
This newly developed battery technology is licensed by a company called Unigrid Battery. And its further development for commercial use is already planned. Darren Tan, lead author of the study and founder of Unigrid Battery, states that this battery layout opens up a new field for solid-state batteries that use permissive anodes such as silicon. The solid-state silicon approach can overcome many of the limitations of conventional batteries. This opens up exciting opportunities to meet market demands with lower costs for higher volumes of energy and safer batteries, especially for grid energy storage.
The new silicon solid-state battery is defined as safe, long-lasting and energy-intensive. And it shows exerting stabilizing effects. In its current state, the battery can be charged 500 times at room temperature with 80% battery health. This new, exciting technology could provide significant increase of range on electric vehicles. And if it can be shrunk enough to fit smartphones, then it's possible that we could end up with batteries that won't need to be charged for a week.