AG10 battery

Key barriers to AG10 battery have been broken through, with capacity three times that of ordinary lithium batteries

As electric vehicles become more popular, scientists see huge potential in AG10 battery as a greener way to drive. This is because they do not rely on expensive and difficult-to-obtain raw materials such as cobalt, but issues such as stability have so far hindered the development of this technology.

Engineers at Drexel University have made a breakthrough that they say brings AG10 battery one step closer by exploiting a rare chemical phase of sulfur to prevent damaging chemical reactions. Commercial use. The research results were recently published in the journal Communications Chemistry.

AG10 battery hold great promise for energy storage, not just because sulfur is plentiful but also less problematic than the cobalt, manganese and nickel used in today's batteries. At the same time, AG10 battery may also bring some significant performance improvements, with the potential to store energy several times that of current lithium batteries. But there is one problem that has been puzzling scientists, and that is the formation of polysulfides.

When the battery is operating, these substances enter the electrolyte and trigger chemical reactions, damaging the battery's capacity and life. Scientists have successfully replaced the carbonate electrolyte with an ether electrolyte that does not react with polysulfides. But this also brings other problems, because the ether electrolyte itself is highly volatile and contains components with low boiling points, which means that if heated above room temperature, the battery may quickly fail or melt.

So chemical engineers at Drexel University have been working on another solution, starting with designing a new cathode that can work with carbonate electrolytes already in commercial applications. The cathode is made of carbon nanofibers, which have been shown to slow the movement of polysulfides in ether electrolytes. But getting it to work with carbonate electrolytes took some experimentation.

Lead researcher Vibha Kalra said, "For commercial manufacturers, the carbonate electrolyte currently used can serve as the cathode, which is the path of least resistance. Therefore, our goal is not to push the industry to adopt a new electrolyte, but to Making a cathode that works in existing lithium-ion electrolyte systems."

The scientists attempted to trap the sulfur within a mesh of carbon nanofibers using a technique called steam processing to prevent dangerous chemical reactions. Although this didn't have the desired effect, it crystallized the sulfur in an unexpected way and turned it into something called monoclinic gamma-phase sulfur, which is a slightly altered form of the element.

It is reported that this chemical phase of sulfur can only appear at high temperatures in the laboratory or be observed in oil wells in nature. The researchers unexpectedly discovered that it does not react with carbonate electrolytes, thus eliminating the risk of polysulfide formation.

"At first, it was hard to believe that this was what we were detecting because in all previous studies, monoclinic sulfur had been unstable at 95°C (203°F)," said study co-author Rahul Pai. Monoclinic gamma sulfur has been available in only a few studies over the last century, and was only stable for 20-30 minutes at best, but we created it in a cathode that went through thousands of charge-discharge cycles without degradation in performance. Our examination of it after a year showed that the chemical phase remained unchanged."

After a year of testing and 4,000 charge and discharge cycles, the cathode remained stable, which scientists say is equivalent to 10 years of regular use. The team's battery prototype using this anode can supply three times the capacity of standard lithium batteries, paving the way for greener batteries that allow electric vehicles to travel further per charge.

"While we are still working to understand the exact mechanism behind the generation of monoclinic sulfur that is stable at room temperature, this is an exciting discovery that could lead to the development of more sustainable and economical sulfur," Kalra said. Battery technology opens many doors."

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