A team led by researchers from Stanford University has developed a new kind of rechargeable battery that has six times more capacity than currently available designs.
This could lead to a number of applications, including mobile phones that can be charged weekly instead of daily and electric vehicles that have a six times greater range before needing a recharge.
More efficient rechargeable batteries could also be used in situations where frequent recharging is not practical, such as in satellites and remote sensors.
There is still a lot of work to do before the batteries can be deployed in consumer electronics or electric vehicles, but the prototype shows a great deal of promise and could potentially be used now in small everyday devices such as remote controls.
The new alkali metal-chlorine batteries rely on a chemical process that sees sodium chloride or lithium chloride being converted to chlorine and back.
In a rechargeable battery, the chemistry reverts to its original state when electrons travel from one side to the other.
In the case of regular batteries, the chemistry cannot be restored once the unit is drained, but adding electricity sets a rechargeable battery up for another use.
Stanford chemistry Professor Hongjie Dai likened the process to a rocking chair that tips one way and then returns to its original position when electricity is added.
Chlorine had not been considered suitable for rechargeable batteries
Chlorine had previously been considered too reactive and difficult to convert back to sodium or lithium chloride to be used in a high-performance rechargeable battery.
In one experiment, however, the researchers realised that the conversion process had stabilised, resulting in a measure of rechargeability.
They set about trying to find out why and also experimented with using different materials as the battery’s positive electrode.
They achieved a breakthrough using an advanced porous carbon material developed by scientists from Taiwan.
The nanosphere structure of the material is filled with tiny hollow spheres that act like a sponge, soaking up the chlorine molecules and storing them in these micropores for later conversion.
The researchers have achieved 1,200 milliamp hours per gram of positive electrode material, six times higher than the 200 milliamp hours per gram capacity of a commercially available rechargeable lithium-ion battery.
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