Batteries That Heal Themselves

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Alert reader Colin Rush provided this breaking development in battery science. Regular readers will remember Dr. Yi Cui’s name.  He’s a Stanford University scientist who has worked with paper batteries, much more powerful electrodes, and means of helping batteries stay together under the continuous strain of expanding and contracting during charging and discharging.  He explained that at the third annual Electric Aircraft Symposium at the Hiller Aviation Museum, and has since adopted several tactics to overcome that problem.  One commercial outgrowth of his work, Amprius, is working on commercial production that benefits from his insights. Since that internal flexing eventually leads to cracking of electrodes, Dr. Cui’s latest announcement brings some hope that such things can not only be overcome, but literally healed.  Just as our bodies have internal resources to fight diseases and repair muscle and bone, batteries can be made to be self-healing. Dr. Cui has been a proponent of using silicon as a major component in electrodes, …