New Method Increases Energy Density in Lithium Batteries

Yuan Yang, assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Columbia Engineering, has developed a new method to increase the energy density of lithium (Li-ion) batteries.

He has built a trilayer structure that is stable even in ambient air, which makes the battery both longer lasting and cheaper to manufacture. The work, which may improve the energy density of lithium batteries by 10-30%, is published in Nano Letters.

During the first charge of a lithium battery after its production, a portion of liquid electrolyte is reduced to a solid phase and coated onto the negative electrode of the battery. This process is irreversible and lowers the energy stored in the battery. The loss is approximately 10% for state-of-the-art negative electrodes, but can reach as high as 20-30% for next-generation negative electrodes with high capacity, such as silicon.

Yang’s method lowered the loss capacity in state-of-the-art graphite electrodes from 8% to 0.3%, and in silicon electrodes, from 13% to -15%. Because the energy density, or capacity, of lithium-ion batteries has been increasing 5-7% annually over the past 25 years, Yang’s results point to a possible solution to enhance the capacity of Li-ion batteries.

Read more at Columbia Engineering

Image Credit: Yuan Yang

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