For years, researchers have aimed to learn more about a group of metal oxides that show promise as key materials for the next generation of lithium-ion batteries because of their mysterious ability to store significantly more energy than should be possible.
An international research team, co-led by The University of Texas at Austin, has cracked the code of this scientific anomaly, knocking down a barrier to building ultra-fast battery energy storage systems.
The team found that these metal oxides possess unique ways to store energy beyond classic electrochemical storage mechanisms.
The research, published in Nature Materials, found several types of metal compounds with up to three times the energy storage capability compared with materials common in today’s commercially available lithium-ion batteries.
“This work demonstrates the very first experimental evidence to show the extra charge is stored physically inside these materials via space charge storage mechanism.”.
Credit: The University of Texas at Austin.
Energy can be stored inside the metal oxides — as opposed to typical methods that see lithium ions move in and out of these materials or convert their crystal structures for energy storage.
And the researchers show that additional charge capacity can also be stored at the surface of iron nanoparticles formed during a series of conventional electrochemical processes.
It is able to quantify the charge capacity by measuring variations in magnetism.
Reference: “Extra storage capacity in transition metal oxide lithium-ion batteries revealed by in situ magnetometry” by Qiang Li, Hongsen Li, Qingtao Xia, Zhengqiang Hu, Yue Zhu, Shishen Yan, Chen Ge, Qinghua Zhang, Xiaoxiong Wang, Xiantao Shang, Shuting Fan, Yunze Long, Lin Gu, Guo-Xing Miao, Guihua Yu and Jagadeesh S.
Moodera, 17 August 2020, Nature Materials.
August 31, 2020
August 31, 2020
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