Cornell University engineers have invented a new type of lithium battery that takes less than five minutes to charge, faster than any such battery on the market, while maintaining consistent performance over long charge and discharge cycles. This breakthrough could alleviate the "range anxiety" of drivers, who worry that electric vehicles won't be able to travel long distances without time-consuming charging.
"Range anxiety is a bigger barrier to the electrification of transportation than other barriers such as battery cost and performance, and we've found a way to eliminate it with sound electrode design," said Lynden Archer, professor and dean of engineering. If you can fully charge an EV battery in five minutes, then you won't need to have a battery big enough to drive 300 miles. You can accept smaller capacity batteries, which can reduce the cost of electric vehicles and enable wider adoption. ”
The team's "Fast Charging, Long-Term Storage in Lithium Batteries" was published in Joule magazine. The lead author is Jin Shuo, a Ph.D. student in chemical and biomolecular engineering.
Lithium-ion batteries are one of the most popular ways to power electric vehicles and smartphones. These batteries are lightweight, reliable, and relatively energy-efficient. However, they take several hours to charge and lack the ability to handle large electrical surges.
The researchers note that indium is a very promising material for fast-charging batteries. Indium is a soft metal that is mainly used to make indium tin oxide coatings for touchscreen displays and solar panels.
The new study shows that as a battery anode, indium has two key properties: an extremely low migration energy barrier, which determines the rate at which ions diffuse in the solid state; and a moderate exchange current density, which is related to the rate of reduction of ions in the anode.
The combination of these qualities – rapid diffusion and slow surface reaction kinetics – is essential for fast charging and long-term storage.
The key innovation was our discovery of a design principle that allowed the metal ions of the battery anode to move freely, finding the correct configuration before participating in the charge storage reaction. "The end result is that the electrodes are in a stable state of morphology during each charge cycle. This is exactly what enables our new fast-charging battery to recharge and discharge thousands of cycles repeatedly. ”
The technology, combined with wireless inductive charging on the road, will reduce the size and cost of batteries, making e-mobility a more viable option for drivers. However, this does not mean that indium anodes are perfect or even practical.
"While this result is exciting because it teaches us how to get a fast-charging battery, indium is heavy, and there are opportunities for computational chemistry modeling, perhaps using generative AI tools, to understand how other lightweight material chemistries might achieve the same essentially lower damk hler number." For example, are there metal alloys that we have never studied that have the desired properties? That's where I like it, because there's a universal principle at work that allows anyone to design a better battery anode that can achieve faster charging rates than state-of-the-art technology. ”
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