They tested over 100 different materials to understand how they would behave in batteries. Instead of using pure aluminum in the foils, they added small amounts of other materials to the aluminum to create foils with particular “microstructures,” or arrangements of different materials. The team decided to take a different approach. The research team knew that aluminum would have energy, cost, and manufacturing benefits when used as a material in the battery’s anode - the negatively charged side of the battery that stores lithium to create energy - but pure aluminum foils were failing rapidly when tested in batteries. The project began as a collaboration between the Georgia Tech team and Novelis, a leading manufacturer of aluminum and the world’s largest aluminum recycler, as part of the Novelis Innovation Hub at Georgia Tech. Solid-state batteries also enable the integration of new high-performance active materials, as shown in this research. While lithium-ion batteries contain a flammable liquid that can lead to fires, solid-state batteries contain a solid material that's not flammable and, therefore, likely safer. Now, solid-state batteries have entered the picture. Developers concluded that aluminum wasn’t a viable battery material, and the idea was largely abandoned. When used in a conventional lithium-ion battery, aluminum fractures and fails within a few charge-discharge cycles, due to expansion and contraction as lithium travels in and out of the material. Researchers investigated its potential in the 1970s, but it didn’t work well. The idea of making batteries with aluminum isn’t new. “It’s interesting that we can use aluminum as a battery material, because it’s cost-effective, highly recyclable, and easy to work with.” “We are always looking for batteries with higher energy density, which would enable electric vehicles to drive for longer distances on a charge,” McDowell said. The team’s new battery system, detailed in Nature Communications, could enable electric vehicles to run longer on a single charge and would be cheaper to manufacture - all while having a positive impact on the environment. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Materials Science and Engineering, is using aluminum foil to create batteries with higher energy density and greater stability. As next-generation long-range vehicles and electric aircraft start to arrive on the market, the search for safer, cheaper, and more powerful battery systems that can outperform lithium-ion is ramping up.Ī team of researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology, led by Matthew McDowell, associate professor in the George W. For the past three decades, lithium-ion batteries have reigned supreme - proving their performance in smartphones, laptops, and electric vehicles.īut battery researchers have begun to approach the limits of lithium-ion. Since the lithium metal anode has ten times the capacity of the graphite anode in the current commercial lithium-ion batteries, and the very high current density opens the door for the design of very thick cathodes, the energy density of solid-state battery products based on this technology will be more competitive than lithium-ion batteries.A good battery needs two things: high energy density to power devices, and stability, so it can be safely and reliably recharged thousands of times. “It really depends on the thickness of the electrolyte layer and the cathode layer, which can be engineered in the design of commercial products. Our concern was that it would make it heavier than other solid-state batteries currently under study, but Li clarified that. That speaks a bunch about how resistant the new solid-state battery is. What used to happen is that batteries without the design these scientists conceived used to fail at high C-rates very early, after about 100 cycles. “The lower capacity retention at a slower C-rate is not surprising, as you are able to cycle more capacity per cycle at a slower C-rate, and that usually drives more capacity loss per cycle in the cathode material of LiNi0.8Mn0.1Co0.1O2 (NMC811), a known effect in the lithium-ion battery field.” How can it retain more capacity retention after 20,000 cycles at 20C – a fast-charging cycle – than it can while charging at only 1.5C? Li explained that to InsideEVs. Putting that in another way, it still retained 82 percent of the total.Ĭharging at 1.5C, the new “BLT” solid-state cell achieved 2,000 cycles with 81.3 percent of capacity retention, which may seem strange. Li and Ye managed to complete 10,000 cycles at 20C before the solid-state battery lost 18 percent of capacity. With that, there’s no short circuit in the battery, and it still lives for a long, long time. When dendrites grow, they invade the LPSCI layers but are not able to break the LGPS.
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