New research injects new energy into battery development

Experts from Dundee’s Faculty of Science, Engineering and Business, working with partners at Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), University of Warwick, have found that oxygen plays a more active role in storing and releasing a battery’s energy than previously thought.

The findings, published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, have the potential to develop and design batteries for electronics and vehicles that charge faster, last longer, and are safer to use.

Until now, scientists have believed that during the charging process much of the activity happens in certain metal elements inside the battery, such as nickel, cobalt, or iron. In this process, lithium ions move from one side of the battery to the other, storing energy, and then move back when the battery is used, with oxygen often viewed as passive and not directly involved in storing or releasing energy.

This new research, however, challenges that long-held assumption. Using advanced computer modelling and laboratory experiments, researchers found that oxygen plays a much more active role in the charging and discharging process.

The study compared two of the main lithium-ion battery cathodes used today in industry: phosphates and layered oxides. Together these forms of batteries are used for a host of applications, including electric vehicles and portable electronics.  While phosphates showed little oxygen participation, the layered oxides showed significant electron extraction from oxygen.

Crucial to these findings was theoretical work carried out at Dundee, with laboratory and further research carried out by experts at Warwick.

Dr Hrishit Banerjee, a theoretical physicist at Dundee’s Faculty of Science, Engineering and Business, who contributed to the research, said, “Global populations have become increasingly reliant on renewable energy technologies and advanced energy storage systems from everything to the mobile phones in our pockets to the cars we drive. This has made understanding the technology underpinning electronic processes inside battery materials increasingly important.

“This research is crucial and gives us a new understanding of how batteries function at a fundamental level. By improving our knowledge of what is occurring at a tiny, atomic level within batteries, we can make big leaps in improving their performance in the real world. 

“Current technologies are limited by the understanding of the underlying physics of how and why batteries fail over time. This general framework will help design batteries with much longer lifetimes.”

The full findings have been published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology,