The world is so big, it's really amazing! Today, I saw two articles, the team led by Professor Ma Tianyi of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia actually invented a magic battery made of water, and it does not ignite and explode, and the cycle life is equivalent to that of commercial lithium-ion batteries, they believe that they can replace lead-acid batteries in 1-3 years and lithium-ion batteries in 5-10 years.
The great success of electric vehicles in recent years has been accompanied by the distressing shortcomings of lithium-ion batteries, which can even be said to be fatal, with short battery life, slow charging, poor low-temperature performance, and the most worrying thing is the problem of explosion, which I estimate has discouraged at least half of people from buying electric vehicles. Many research institutions and battery manufacturers in various countries have invested a lot of money to start a vigorous power battery steelmaking, and have developed new batteries of various materials and technologies, some of which are even very strange and weird.
For example, yesterday I saw Argentine scientists using cow hair to make lithium-sulfur batteries, and the year before last year, there were quantum batteries that use quantum superposition and quantum entanglement, which can charge all batteries at the same time, and can also be charged with all chargers at the same time, and can be fully charged in a few minutes or even seconds. It sounds mysterious, and it's actually mysterious, but you can find a lot of information on the Internet, and people in Canada, South Korea, and China are all researching it.
However, the Australian scientists' "water battery" is absolutely not mysterious, they call it a water metal battery, the biggest feature is that it replaces the organic electrolyte with water, so it has the advantages of safety and non-explosion, and solves the most lethal problem of lithium-ion batteries.
Then there is the use of metallic materials such as manganese and zinc, which are abundant on the earth and are cheaper and less toxic, reducing health and environmental risks. Moreover, this kind of battery can be safely disassembled, and the material can be reused, which solves the problem of disposal after the battery is scrapped.
The researchers also plated bismuth metal and its oxides on the electrodes, which can prevent dendrite growth, improve battery life, and prevent battery short circuits and other serious failures. Professor Ma said that the cycle life of water batteries is comparable to that of commercial lithium-ion batteries on the market.
However, there is still a certain gap in energy density, which is currently 75Wh kg, which is equivalent to 30% of the lithium-ion batteries used by Tesla, and Professor Ma's team is developing new nanomaterial electrodes to further improve the energy density.
He believes that magnesium-ion water batteries may be the most promising batteries in the future, because they are lightweight, have high potential energy density, can achieve faster charging times, better adapt to high-power-consuming equipment and application scenarios, and are low-cost, simple in manufacturing process, and very suitable for large-scale production and use, such as grid energy storage, and integrated use with renewable energy sources such as solar energy.
Professor Ma is also optimistic that water batteries may replace lead-acid batteries in the next 1-3 years, and even lithium-ion batteries in 5-10 years.
I feel that I may be too optimistic, because there are too many batteries currently under development, such as lithium-ion, lithium-metal, lithium-air, lithium-sulfur, lithium-silicon-carbon, etc., as well as sodium-ion, sodium-sulfur, zinc-air, iron-air batteries, etc., as well as liquid, semi-solid, solid, condensed matter, etc., and there are hydrogen batteries and hydrogen energy eyeing each other.
But with the continuous rise of renewable energy installed capacity, it is almost certain that in the future, batteries will replace oil, coal, and natural gas as the foundation of the entire energy field, and human beings will also completely switch from using fossil fuels to use battery stored energy, so the development of the battery field is actually just beginning, and lithium-ion batteries have guessed the beginning of the story, but may not guess the end of the story.
The study was published in the journals Advanced Materials and Small Structures. Title:
synergy of dendrites-impeded atomic clusters dissociation and side reactions suppressed inert interface protection for ultrastable zn anode
interface polarization effects enhancing mn2o3@tio2@mxene heterostructures for aqueous magnesium ion capacitors: guided charge distribution and transportation via built-in electric fields