Aluminum Yolks and Titanium Shells

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

A new “yolk-and-shell” nanoparticle could boost the capacity and power of lithium-ion batteries. MIT’s press release gives a graphic overview of what damages electrodes and shortens battery life.  “One big problem faced by electrodes in rechargeable batteries, as they go through repeated cycles of charging and discharging, is that they must expand and shrink during each cycle — sometimes doubling in volume, and then shrinking back. This can lead to repeated shedding and reformation of its “skin” layer that consumes lithium irreversibly, degrading the battery’s performance over time.” Dr. Yi Cui and teams at  Stanford’s National Accelerator Laboratory (Formerly the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center), and the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory all published papers on a similar  joint accomplishment three years ago, as reported in this blog.  Dr. Cui had studied several alternative ways to reduce the effects of expansion and contraction on electrodes. According to an MIT news release, “Now a team of researchers at MIT, led …