Major storage capacity in water-based batteries

Date:
April 4, 2023
Source:
Texas A&M University
Summary:
Chemical engineers have discovered a 1,000% difference in the
storage capacity of metal-free, water-based battery electrodes.


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FULL STORY ========================================================================== Researchers at Texas A&M University have discovered a 1,000% difference
in the storage capacity of metal-free, water-based battery electrodes.


========================================================================== These batteries are different from lithium-ion batteries that contain
cobalt.

The group's goal of researching metal-free batteries stems from having
better control over the domestic supply chain since cobalt and lithium
are outsourced.

This safer chemistry would also prevent battery fires.

Chemical engineering professor Dr. Jodie Lutkenhaus and chemistry
assistant professor Dr. Daniel Tabor has published their findings about lithium-free batteries in Nature Materials.

"There would be no battery fires anymore because it's water-based,"
Lutkenhaus said. "In the future, if materials shortages are projected,
the price of lithium-ion batteries will go way up. If we have this
alternative battery, we can turn to this chemistry, where the supply
is much more stable because we can manufacture them here in the United
States and materials to make them are here." Lutkenhaus said aqueous
batteries consist of a cathode, electrolyte and an anode. The cathodes
and anodes are polymers that can store energy, and the electrolyte is
water mixed with organic salts. The electrolyte is key to ion conduction
and energy storage through its interactions with the electrode.

"If an electrode swells too much during cycling, then it can't conduct electrons very well, and you lose all the performance," she said. "I
believe that there is a 1,000% difference in energy storage capacity,
depending on the electrolyte choice because of swelling effects."
According to their article, redox-active, non-conjugated radical
polymers (electrodes) are promising candidates for metal-free aqueous
batteries because of the polymers' high discharge voltage and fast redox kinetics. The reaction is complex and difficult to resolve because of
the simultaneous transfer of electrons, ions and water molecules.

"We demonstrate the nature of the redox reaction by examining aqueous electrolytes of varying chao-/kosmotropic character using electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring at a range of timescales," according to researchers in the article.

Tabor's research group complemented the experimental efforts with
computational simulation and analysis. The simulations gave insights into
the microscopic molecular-scale picture of the structure and dynamics.

"Theory and experiment often work closely together to understand these materials. One of the new things that we do computationally in this paper
is that we actually charge up the electrode to multiple states of charge
and see how the surroundings respond to this charging," Tabor said.

Researchers macroscopically observed if the battery cathode was working
better in the presence of certain kinds of salts through measuring exactly
how much water and salt is going into the battery as it is operating.

"We did that to explain what has been observed experimentally," he
said. "Now, we would like to expand our simulations to future systems. We needed to have our theory confirmed of what are the forces that are
driving that kind of injection of water and solvent.

"With this new energy storage technology, this is a push forward to
lithium- free batteries. We have a better molecular level picture of what
makes some battery electrodes work better than others, and this gives us
strong evidence of where to go forward in materials design," Tabor said.

The project is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National
Science Foundation through the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station.

* RELATED_TOPICS
o Matter_&_Energy
# Batteries # Fuel_Cells # Energy_and_Resources #
Chemistry # Nature_of_Water # Inorganic_Chemistry #
Energy_Technology # Materials_Science
* RELATED_TERMS
o Fuel_cell o Silver o Indium o Sodium o Hafnium o
Battery_electric_vehicle o Bismuth o Chemical_bond

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Texas_A&M_University. Original
written by Raven Wuebker.

Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Ting Ma, Cheng-Han Li, Ratul Mitra Thakur, Daniel P. Tabor, Jodie L.

Lutkenhaus. The role of the electrolyte in non-conjugated radical
polymers for metal-free aqueous energy storage electrodes. Nature
Materials, 2023; 22 (4): 495 DOI: 10.1038/s41563-023-01518-z ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230404114200.htm

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