Introduction: Anode-Free Sodium Solid-State Battery
A team from the Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion (LESC) in the US has made a groundbreaking discovery. They have created the world’s first anode-free sodium solid-state battery. This innovation could lead to inexpensive, fast-charging, high-capacity batteries for Electric Vehicles and grid storage.
Key Details of the Sodium Battery Development
UC San Diego PhD candidate Grayson Deysher is the first author of the paper detailing their work. Their findings, published in Nature Energy, demonstrate a new battery architecture. This design allows for stable cycling for several hundred cycles.
Deysher stated, “Although there have been previous sodium, solid-state, and anode-free batteries, no one has been able to successfully combine these three ideas until now.”
Why Sodium Over Lithium?
By removing the anode and using sodium instead of lithium, the team asserts that the new battery is more affordable and environmentally friendly to produce. The solid-state design ensures the battery is both safe and powerful.
To achieve the energy density of a lithium battery, the team had to invent a new sodium battery architecture. In traditional batteries, an anode stores ions during charging. While the battery is in use, ions flow from the anode through an electrolyte to a cathode.
Anode-Free Innovations
Anode-free batteries store ions on an electrochemical deposition of alkali metal directly on the current collector. This method enables higher cell voltage, lower cost, and increased energy density. However, it presents challenges. “In any anode-free battery, there needs to be good contact between the electrolyte and the current collector,” explained Deysher.
Typically, this contact is easy to achieve with a liquid electrolyte, which can flow and wet every surface. Yet, liquid electrolytes create a buildup of solid electrolyte interphase. This buildup steadily consumes active materials, reducing battery effectiveness over time.
To solve this issue, the team designed a current collector from aluminum powder. This powder flows like a liquid to surround the electrolyte. During assembly, the powder was densified under high pressure. This formed a solid current collector while maintaining liquid-like contact with the electrolyte. As a result, the battery achieves low-cost and high-efficiency cycling.
Future Prospects
“Sodium solid-state batteries are usually seen as a far-off-in-the-future technology,” added Deysher. “But we hope this paper can invigorate more push into the sodium area by demonstrating that it can indeed work well, even better than the lithium version in some cases.”
Both Deysher and Prof. Y. Shirley Meng, principal investigator at LESC, have filed a patent application through UC San Diego’s Office of Innovation and Commercialization.
This advancement helps solidify the role of sodium in future battery technologies. With its promising attributes, it could soon pave the way for more sustainable energy solutions.
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