CR1220 battery

French supercapacitor company Nawa triples CR1220 battery density

Nawa Technologies of France says it has developed a new electrode design that promises to radically improve the chemical performance of existing and future batteries. Previously, the company was already well known in the supercapacitor market. But now, the same technology has been applied to lithium batteries. In addition to up to 3 times the energy density and 10 times the performance, it also has faster charging speeds, up to 5 times the battery life, and quite good cost-effectiveness. The research focuses on how the active materials in the electrode are maintained and the routes that ions take when transferring charge. Taking the current typical activated carbon electrode as an example, it is mainly made of a mixture of powder, additives and binders.

In the case of carbon nanotubes, they are usually stuck to it in the form of tangled spaghetti, providing a random, chaotic, and often blocked path for the current-carrying ions (flowing to the collector under load).

Theworld'sfastestelectrode (via)

Nawa's vertically aligned carbon nanotube approach, on the other hand, creates a comb-like cathode or anode structure that grows hundreds of billions of straight, highly conductive nanotubes per square centimeter.

These carbon nanotubes, which are firmly fixed to the tiny electrodes, can then be coated with active materials (lithium ions or other), greatly reducing the distance that charges need to travel to enter or leave the battery.

Rigid vertical structures can effectively improve power/energy density/charging speed/battery life.

Because each lithium spot is more or less attached to the nanotube that serves as a direct highway (or part of the current collector), the average free path of the ions can be greatly reduced.

With this new approach, lithium ions only need to move a few nanometers on the material, rather than several microns in conventional electrodes, said Pascal Boulanger, the company's founder and CEO.

Schematic diagram of discharge state

As a result, Nawa Technologies can fundamentally improve the power density of new lithium batteries. Even smaller batteries can achieve 10 times the charging and discharging performance of previous ones. With the right charging infrastructure, the battery can be replenished from 0% to 80% in 5 minutes.

Thanks to the ultra-light nano-scaffold and fewer adhesive/additive gaps, the battery body can also be made lighter and more compact (2~3 times volume weight improvement). In addition, the rigid nanotube array and large surface area can greatly alleviate the performance degradation caused by time (5 times life).

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