- A project in Europe aims to create a battery that’s environmentally friendly and energy-dense.
- Researchers have reportedly developed a “super glue” that maintains the structure of a pack even after damage.
- The chemistry includes special cathodes and anodes and a new type of electrolyte that protects them both.
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for electric vehicle batteries. Battery sizes differ across vehicle categories and in many cases their chemistries vary as well. For battery makers, the goals remain the same: more energy density, faster charging, cost-effectiveness and better safety. But the means of getting there keep changing. Battery scientists in Europe say one way of achieving these goals is a “self-repairing” pack that’s also environmentally friendly.
Norwegian research organization SINTEF— also known as The Foundation for Industrial and Technical Research—experimented with a battery that it claims is more stable than traditional lithium-ion packs and can deliver better driving range with a longer lifespan. It likened this battery to a “sandwich,” with the cathode on top, anode at the bottom and separators and binders in between. This analogy can be true of any battery, but here’s why this one is different.
The cathode reportedly uses lithium-nickel-manganese oxide, which is apparently cobalt-free and contains less nickel and less lithium than traditional EV batteries. This chemistry provides a higher average voltage, which should improve charging times and performance. It also packs more energy into a smaller volume, SINTEF scientist Nils Peter Wagner told British publication Tech Xplore.
The anode, on the other hand, is made from a silicon-graphite composite. Battery companies are increasingly exploring silicon anodes as they remove the inefficiencies of a graphite-heavy anode. Several American battery start-ups, including Amprius, Group14 and Sila Nanotechnologies are exploring silicon anodes. The downside is that Silicon anodes tend to swell during the charge and discharge cycles. But that problem is solved with the graphite composite, which lends the anode strength and stability.
There’s also a “super glue” that reportedly repairs minor damage to the cells, akin to a self-sealing car tire. It comes in the form of special binders and separators that hold the battery structure together. In simple terms, a binder is a material that keeps active particles in a battery together, whereas a separator prevents short circuits, ensuring that the cathode and anode don’t come in contact. Development of the first-generation prototype electrolyte with these materials is already complete and now the focus is on the second-generation cells, according to SINTEF.
Photo by: InsideEVs
The ultimate step is figuring out how to bring this technology to the market, with plans reportedly underway to scale up production. It’s one thing to innovate in a lab, but applying all of that development to a practical, mass-produced product is another challenge altogether. We’ve seen many battery chemistry breakthroughs over the past few years, but few have made it into the real world.
As Bob Lee, president and chief strategy officer of LG Energy Solution in North America said in the Autoline Network podcast, “Manufacturing is the technology. Trying to produce [batteries] in high volumes across large surface areas in a uniform way, that is the trick.”
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