Bylines and excerpts from TIME, Forbes , Digital Trends, Green Car Reports and RSC.org ….
94-year old Li-Ion battery inventor unveils ultra-efficient glass battery
John B. Goodenough, an emeritus professor at the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas, Austin, pioneered the lithium-ion battery technology that is now the industry standard, and now the 94-year-old is ready to push the envelope on battery innovation again. Goodenough along with senior research fellow Maria Helena Braga, lead a team of researchers who have developed a low-cost all-solid-state battery that is safer and more efficient than existing lithium-ion technology.
The new battery uses a sodium- or lithium-coated glass electrolyte that has triple the storage capacity of a lithium ion battery. It also charges in minutes instead of hours and operates in both frigid and hot weather (from -20 to 60 degrees centigrade). Early tests suggest the battery is capable of at least 1,200 charge-discharge cycles, significantly more charging cycles than a comparable lithium-ion battery, and best of all, the glass-based electrolyte will not form the dendrites that plague lithium-ion battery technology. The dendrites accumulate as part of the standard charging and recharging cycle and eventually cause a short circuit that often results in a smoldering or burning battery…
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In this paper, we report a new strategy for a safe, low-cost, all-solid-state rechargeable sodium or lithium battery cell that has the required energy density and cycle life for a battery that powers an all-electric road vehicle.
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The cells use a solid glass electrolyte …which promises to offer acceptable operation at lower temperatures; the glass also has a surface that is wet by metallic lithium or sodium, … that makes it stable on contact with both an alkali-metal anode and a high-voltage cathode without the formation of an SEI.
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The glass also contains electric dipoles that endow it with a large dielectric constant; its optimal properties are, therefore, only obtained after aging for over 10 days at 25 °C, but only for a few minutes at 100 °C.3
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With this glass, a rechargeable battery with a metallic lithium or sodium anode and an insertion-compound cathode may require a polymer or liquid catholyte in contact with the cathode;
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but all-solid-state metal-plating batteries with the cathode strategy reported herein are simpler to fabricate at lower cost and offer much higher energy densities, longer cycle life, and acceptable charge/discharge rates.
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