Rice University engineers may have found a way to make lithium-ion batteries more efficient. According to reports, researchers have developed a scalable method that helps reduce lithium loss and improves a battery’s life cycle, optimizing a process known as prelithiation. The process is based on coating the silicon anodes with a more stable lithium metal particle.
This breakthrough came when a chemical and biomolecular engineer in the Rice lab tried to spray a coat of the particle mixture onto the anodes. Engineer Sibani Lisa Biswal found that spraying enough on the anodes improves battery life by between 22 and 44 percent. Also, battery cells with a greater amount of coating could provide higher efficiency.
This development is crucial and could completely change the way we use battery powered devices in our daily lives. Phones, smartwatches, and various other battery-powered products use lithium-powered batteries to generate the electricity they need. If we can increase the working efficiency of lithium batteries by spraying these particles on them, we can improve battery life in many areas.
However, this process also has a downside. When operated at full capacity (charged to 100 percent), batteries with particles on them began to drain faster in subsequent cycles. A full study detailing the findings has been published in ACS Applied Energy Materials.
Of course, other improvements could also help make batteries more efficient. First, replacing the graphite in lithium-ion batteries with silicon provides a better energy density. This is because graphite can collect fewer lithium ions than silicon. There is currently intense pressure to make this change in mainstream lithium-ion batteries.
But silicon in batteries also has some downsides, like the new particle spray that improves the efficiency of lithium-ion batteries. The big problem here is that silicon can form solid electrolyte interphase, which actually consumes lithium and therefore quickly depletes the battery.
If we can overcome this problem, these new particles and the use of silicon in lithium-ion batteries could lead to longer-lasting and more reliable batteries. Advances in the battery continue to surprise the scientific community, and we can only hope that these discoveries continue and eventually reach the broader consumer market in some way.
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