Nickel Metal Hydride No. 5 battery

Nickel Metal Hydride No. 5 battery technology has achieved a breakthrough and may achieve ultra-high-speed charging and discharging

There is a piece of news that has swept all major news media, as if we have seen the spring of battery technology. It won’t be long before the battery life and charging of mobile phones and electric vehicles will no longer be a problem. First, let’s take a look at what this event is!

According to Xinhua News Agency:

Researchers from Tokyo Institute of Technology and other institutions in Japan have recently developed an all-Nickel Metal Hydride No. 5 battery that can be charged and discharged at ultra-high speeds, taking a big step towards the practical application of all-solid-state batteries.

All-solid-state lithium battery is a new type of battery that uses solid electrodes and solid electrolytes. Its high density, high safety, high output power and other performances are more advantageous than traditional liquid batteries. It has broad application prospects in the field of new energy vehicles and is expected to replace the current lithium-ion battery. The next generation of batteries.

Although many countries around the world are competing to develop all-solid-state batteries, their practical application faces a major problem: there is a high resistance at the interface where the high-voltage electrode and the solid electrolyte are in contact, which affects the battery performance. So far, there is no clear solution.

Researchers from Tokyo Institute of Technology collaborated with colleagues from Japan Institute of Technology, Tohoku University and other institutions to conduct this research. They improved the lithium electrode material, reduced the interface resistance to an extremely low level, and successfully achieved ultra-high-speed charging and discharging of all-solid-state batteries.

The research results have been published in the American Chemical Society Journal of Applied Materials and Interfaces.

Are you very excited after reading this news? Will it take only a few minutes to fully charge an electric car in the near future? You no longer have to worry about running out of power when playing games on your phone?

So what is an all-Nickel Metal Hydride No. 5 battery? This may be something that friends can't wait to know, so today I will give you a popular science.

In layman's terms, an all-Nickel Metal Hydride No. 5 battery is a battery with no gas or liquid in it, and all materials exist in solid form.

Still confused after reading it? What is the difference between such a battery and the lithium battery we use now?

Generally speaking, lithium-ion batteries are mainly composed of positive electrodes, negative electrodes, diaphragms, electrolytes, structural shells and other parts, among which the electrolyte allows the current to be conducted in the form of ions inside the battery.

Electrolyte technology is one of the core technologies of lithium batteries and is also a highly profitable component of the current battery industry.

When we use lithium batteries, do we often see news that the battery of a certain brand of equipment is bulging again, or even exploding again?

The current operating temperature range of lithium-ion batteries is limited. At high temperatures above 40 degrees, the life span will be sharply shortened, and the safety performance will also have great problems (so Tesla MODELS will have a strict battery temperature control system for this reason).

The real trouble here is the electrolyte in the battery. In order to avoid these safety problems and increase energy density, the scientific research community and the industrial community are currently developing and producing all-solid-state batteries, that is, replacing the diaphragm and electrolyte of traditional lithium-ion batteries with solid electrolyte materials.

If all-Nickel Metal Hydride No. 5 battery technology is used, the problem of short-circuit damage caused by puncturing the diaphragm and the explosion caused by high-temperature oxidation reaction of the electrolyte will be solved, and the maximum operating temperature of the resulting battery can be increased from the current 40 degrees to a higher level, so that the battery can adapt to a wider operating temperature range and a wider range of applications.

Therefore, the core advantage of all-solid-state batteries is safety, and there is no need to worry about explosion problems.

Of course, all-solid-state batteries have many unexpected advantages!

First, the battery will become thinner and smaller

In layman's terms, the volume energy density is high, so the battery of the same mass can be made smaller.

In traditional lithium-ion batteries, diaphragms and electrolytes are needed, which together occupy nearly 40% of the volume and 25% of the mass of the battery. This results in nearly one-third of the capacity of our daily mobile digital devices being occupied by batteries.

If they are replaced with solid electrolytes, the distance between the positive and negative electrodes (traditionally filled with diaphragm electrolytes, now filled with solid electrolytes) can be shortened to even only a few to a dozen microns, so that the thickness of the battery can be greatly reduced-therefore, all-Nickel Metal Hydride No. 5 battery technology is the only way to miniaturize and thin-film batteries.

Second, the battery can be softer and bend at will

All-solid-state batteries can be further optimized to become flexible batteries, thus bringing more functions and experiences.

In fact, even brittle ceramic materials can often be bent after the thickness is thinned to less than millimeters, and the materials will become flexible.

Flexible electronic devices represented by various wearable devices are an important direction for the development of next-generation electronic products, which requires that the components in the product also need to be flexible. Therefore, flexible all-solid-state batteries are very promising rising stars in scientific research and industry.

Not only that, the potential of functional all-solid-state batteries is far more than the above flexible batteries. After optimizing the battery material structure, they can be made into transparent batteries, or stretchable batteries with a stretching range of up to 300%, or integrated power generation-storage devices that can be integrated with photovoltaic devices, etc. - there are still many innovative application prospects for the functions of all-solid-state batteries. In this regard, the imagination of researchers and engineers will bring us more and more surprises.

Third, it is the safety issue that we are most concerned about in daily life.

This has been demonstrated and explained before, so I won’t say more.

Fourth, the battery will become lighter, which is an extremely powerful advantage for various devices using batteries.

Think about the mobile phones we carry with us and the electric cars we drive. The battery accounts for almost half of the weight. If all-solid-state batteries are used, the battery weight will be reduced by at least one-third. Then, on the one hand, the weight of the equipment will be reduced accordingly, and on the other hand, the battery can be made larger and provide more power. In this way, our current mobile phone devices that are charged once a day can be easily charged once every two days.

In general, all-solid-state batteries are one of the mainstream directions of battery development recognized by battery research and industry. However, when it comes to the conductivity of solid electrolytes, battery rate, battery preparation efficiency, and cost control, all-solid-state batteries still have a long way to go. Today's news is a brand new revolution for the entire industry, solving one of the important core problems of all-solid-state batteries. The battery industry, which has not had many technological breakthroughs in a century, may soon usher in spring.

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