A few days ago, scientists at the University of Central Florida who are studying alternative lithium battery designs have proposed an improvement plan that they claim can greatly improve the performance of these devices. This breakthrough is mainly to apply a new protective coating to one electrode of the battery, which can significantly slow down the degradation of the battery and enable the battery to maintain a greater amount of electricity for a longer period of time.
In a lithium-ion battery, electrons generated by the positive electrode (or negative electrode) move to the positive electrode (or negative electrode) to generate electricity. Normally, the anode component is made of graphite, but there are also some potential substitutes, such as metal tin with high capacity and high conductivity.
However, when the battery is charged, it will cause the volume of tin to change and cause it to deteriorate rapidly. Professor Yang Yang of the University of Central Florida has been exploring ways to improve battery performance, including the mechanical degradation of tin anodes in lithium-ion batteries. Now he believes he may have found a solution.
As part of his research field, Yang and his team explore different variants of alloy materials. Since each is unique in composition, structure and performance, they invented a method that can be applied to the tin anode and remains stable during the entire charging process to prevent it from collapsing in a way that is fatal to the battery. Thin film-made of tin and copper.
Yang pointed out that their research work has shown that the anode degradation rate of this film is more than 1000% less than that of commonly used tin films.
The researchers said that this battery design is not only suitable for compact environments such as smart phones, but also can be used in larger applications such as electric cars or electric trucks. If this battery design can work in this situation, it will allow the phone to last longer after each charge, or allow the electric car to drive farther without charging.