Scientists have made a major advance in the push to make better, more efficient batteries for the next generation of devices.
According to Interesting Engineering, Hong Kong-based researchers working with Tsinghua University, the Beijing Institute of Technology, and Lingnan University say they've cracked one of the key flaws in sodium-based batteries.
Sodium-ion batteries are a burgeoning technology, but they come with some serious issues. Namely, they have a tendency to short-circuit and lose their capacity quickly during rapid charging.
The answer to the problem was a relatively simple one. Researchers increased the concentration of sodium ions in the electrolyte, which forced them to store energy in a more orderly fashion. They saw significant results; the batteries still held 70% of their charge after 500 charge-recharge cycles with the new concentrations.
Sodium batteries are a popular potential alternative to lithium for several reasons, the biggest of them being the availability of resources. Lithium is a rare earth metal, and much of the known reserves are located in China, meaning the company has something approaching a global monopoly on the harvesting and refining of lithium.
On top of that, mining and refining lithium is an environmentally damaging process; it never appears in a pure form in nature, and needs to be separated from other elements in order to get viable lithium for electronics.
By contrast, sodium is plentiful around the world and can be more easily refined. Even with the issues around current sodium battery technology, innovations are pushing them closer and closer to matching lithium batteries in terms of efficiency and longevity. As they do, you can expect to see sodium-ion batteries starting to appear in more and more technology, from cell phones to EVs.
"This study responds to urgent global and local needs in energy transition," Professor Li Liangliang, associate professor at Lingnan University and co-corresponding author of the paper, said. "The technology has the potential to support greener and more affordable mobility solutions, while reducing dependence on imported lithium."
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