Researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, a German research institute, recently conducted in-depth research into metal electrodes for lithium-ion batteries and found that a highly porous tin foam greatly outperformed graphite, which could lead to exciting new battery developments.
Lithium-ion batteries are found in millions of electronic products worldwide, from cellphones to electric vehicles. Simply put, an electrode is a conductor that makes contact with the non-metallic part of a circuit. Graphite is the electrode for modern lithium-ion batteries.
Though it is effective, its capacity is limited, which is why the team at the HZB institute sounded so excited about finding alternatives.
As Dr. Francisco Garcia-Moreno explained in a post on Tech Xplore: "The tin foams we developed at the TU Berlin are highly porous and a promising alternative to traditional electrode materials."
One of the most promising areas this research could impact is the automotive industry. Electric vehicles are growing in popularity every year, but one of the biggest impediments to more widespread adoption is range anxiety.
According to reporting by PBS, half of Americans polled are reluctant to switch to an EV because of concerns over range. Though there are now over 200,000 charging stations in the U.S., coverage is patchy in some areas. Although research shows that range anxiety is largely overstated, batteries with much higher capacity would go a long way to winning over concerned consumers.
Additionally, while EVs will cause far less harmful pollution over their lifetimes than gas-powered vehicles, manufacturing still has a major impact on the environment because of the graphite used in the batteries.
While still in early development, the signs for the future widespread use of porous tin foam as an electrode are promising. Tin has triple the capacity of graphite and is relatively common. The research paper on the experiments suggested that future production could easily increase with demand:
"Since metal foam production is already industrialized, this electrode exhibits high scalability potential," the paper said.
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