A team of engineers at UC San Diego has created a brand new type of battery that could revolutionize the way we store energy, not just in our devices and cars, but for homes and the grid.
The major breakthrough was realized by combining two promising technologies to form a new type of solid-state battery. Those technologies are a solid electrolyte and a silicon anode, with the result being a battery that lasts longer, charges faster, and holds the promise of a huge increase in energy density. That’s just the start of the benefits, though, as this battery is non-flammable, contains no toxic or volatile compounds, and is free of rare elements.
Solid-state batteries are highly-desirable because they remove the need for a liquid or polymer inside the battery and therefore are much safer (they can’t burst into flames). They can also hold more energy than those with a liquid electrolyte while being able to cope with higher voltages allowing for faster charging.
Silicon anodes, on the other hand, have an energy density up to 10x higher than the graphite anodes used in batteries today, but they degrade very quickly when coupled with a liquid electrolyte. By switching to a solid electrolyte, in this case it’s sulfide-based, the engineers managed to create an “extremely stable” battery. They also removed the carbon and binders from the anode, and used micro-silicon instead of nano-silicon, which is less processed and therefore cheaper.
“The solid-state silicon approach overcomes many limitations in conventional batteries. It presents exciting opportunities for us to meet market demands for higher volumetric energy, lowered costs, and safer batteries especially for grid energy storage,” said Darren H. S. Tan, the project’s lead and the CEO of spin-off energy company Unigrid.
The engineers worked with LG Energy Solution on battery research and Unigrid has licensed the technology to commercialize it. Research at UC San Diego is continuing on the battery in a bid to perfect the technology, but even at this early stage, laboratory tests are achieving 500 charge and discharge cycles with 80% capacity retention at room temperature.
