Stanford
scientists have developed the first high-performance aluminium battery
that is fast-charging, long-lasting and inexpensive. Researchers say the
new technology offers a safe alternative to many commercial batteries
in wide use today.
“We
have developed a rechargeable aluminium battery that may replace
existing storage devices, such as alkaline batteries, which are bad for
the environment, and lithium-ion batteries, which occasionally burst
into flames,” said Hongjie Dai, a professor of chemistry at Stanford
University.
“Our new battery won’t catch fire, even if you drill through it,” said Dai.
Aluminium
has long been an attractive material for batteries, mainly because of
its low cost, low flammability and high-charge storage capacity,
researchers said. An aluminium-ion battery consists of two electrodes: a
negatively charged anode made of aluminium and a positively charged
cathode.
“People have tried different kinds of materials for the cathode,” Dai said.
“We
accidentally discovered that a simple solution is to use graphite,
which is basically carbon. In our study, we identified a few types of
graphite material that give us very good performance,” said Dai. The
team placed the aluminium anode and graphite cathode, along with an
ionic liquid electrolyte, inside a flexible polymer-coated pouch.
“The
electrolyte is basically a salt that’s liquid at room temperature, so
it’s very safe,” said Stanford graduate student Ming Gong, co-lead
author of the study. Aluminium batteries are safer than conventional
lithium-ion batteries used in millions of laptops and cell phones today,
Dai added. Smartphone owners know that it can take hours to charge a
lithium-ion battery. But the team reported “unprecedented charging
times” of down to one minute with the aluminium prototype.
Aluminium
batteries developed at other laboratories usually died after just 100
charge-discharge cycles. But the Stanford battery was able to withstand
more than 7,500 cycles without any loss of capacity.
“This
was the first time an ultra-fast aluminium-ion battery was constructed
with stability over thousands of cycles,” researchers said.
“Another
feature of the aluminium battery is flexibility. You can bend it and
fold it, so it has the potential for use in flexible electronic devices.
Aluminium is also a cheaper metal than lithium,” Gong said.
The study was published in the the journal Nature.
Posted by : Gizmeon
No comments:
Post a Comment