PHILADELPHIA – Scientists have come across an unexpected way to commercialize a breakthrough form of battery technology, opening up the possibilities for a new generation of long-range robots and electric vehicles.
Engineers at Drexel University in Philadelphia accidentally stumbled upon the technique while working on another solution to improve the viability of lithium-sulfur batteries, which are often described as the “holy grail” of batteries due to the vast improvements they offer compared to industry standard lithium-ion batteries.
Lithium-sulfur batteries have three times the potential charge capacity of lithium-ion batteries, which are found in everything from smartphones to electric cars. Their inherent instability, however, have so far made them unsuitable for commercial applications, with lithium-sulfur batteries undergoing a 78 per cent change in size every charging cycle.
The research team at Drexel were looking at ways to redesign the battery’s cathode in order to prevent the damaging chemical reactions that take place during the charging process, but what they discovered instead was a rare chemical phase of sulfur that prevents the reaction.
The discovery prevents the formation of a chemical compound known as polysulfides and instead crystallises the sulfur into something called monoclinic gamma-phase sulfur, which had previously only been achieved at high temperatures in the lab.
“At first it was hard to believe that this is what we were detecting, because in all previous research monoclinic sulfur has been unstable under 95C,” said Rahul Pai, co-author of the research, which was published in the Nature journal Communications Chemistry.
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