Leon Yao

Three pioneers of lithium-ion batteries shared the 2019 Nobel Prize for Chemistry but after four decades of research, the implementation of the batteries has not been without obstacles. Lithium metal, an ideal anode material for its high energy density, was used in the earliest lithium battery prototypes. However, this design has been shelved due to insurmountable safety issues. Needle-like structures called dendrites

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While lithium has long been touted as the future of advanced batteries, the technology’s limitations and accidents at lithium facilities have encouraged manufacturers to consider alternatives to power the battery revolution. Umar Ali profiles alternative battery materials with significant potential. Zinc Over the past seven years, 110 villages in Africa and Asia have received power from batteries that use zinc

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Investment in battery and electric vehicle manufacturing continues apace around the world, with Tesla already producing units on a trial basis at its giant Shanghai gigafactory despite only breaking ground this year. But the breakneck expansion of the EV industry, where lithium-ion batteries dominate, has not been enough to lift prices for the raw material, which continued to decline, according

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Researchers have been in a race to find ways to improve lithium-ion batteries. They are also looking to develop alternatives to the lithium-ion battery that would be lower cost and more sustainable to manufacture. And they may just have found one. Aluminum-based batteries would be cheaper to make, because aluminum is the third most abundant element in the Earth’s crust after oxygen and

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As car manufacturers ramp up production of electric cars, the metals used to make the vehicles’ batteries may face a supply crunch in the next few years, according to a new report. Lithium, cobalt, and nickel supplies are expected to be worst hit, the Wednesday report from energy consulting and research firm Wood Mackenzie. That’s as analysts predict a boom

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Batteries are undoubtedly an essential factor both for the envisaged energy transition and for the mobility of the future. Thus, scientists at the the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS have developed an innovative process for the cost-efficient production of thin lithium anodes made of molten lithium. In a joint project, the Dresden Institute is working with the companies hpulcas and SGS, as

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Researchers have discovered a new high performance and safe battery material (LTPS) capable of speeding up charge and discharge to a level never observed so far. Practically, if the first tests are confirmed, this new material could be used in the batteries of the future with better energy storage, faster charge and discharge and higher safety targeting many uses from

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While it is often stated only 5% of lithium-ion batteries are recycled, a review of research into the second life and recycling of lithium-ion batteries suggests that is a gross understatement. A new study found almost 100,000 tons of waste batteries were recycled last year – about half of what reached end-of-life. There are a good deal of misleading statistics

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As the world’s power needs grow, the search is on for better battery technology — not just to keep smartphones charged for longer, but to run electric cars and to store energy produced by solar and wind power. For the last 25 years, the lithium-ion battery, has held sway. Packing a large amount of energy into a relatively small space

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President Donald Trump’s policies are doing nothing to help the US develop domestic battery manufacturing, an entrepreneur who is aiming for his company to be one of the country’s largest energy storage suppliers has warned. Doron Myersdorf, chief executive of StoreDot, an Israeli battery company backed by multinational groups BP, Daimler and TDK, among others, is looking for a location

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