New development in Li-ion batteries technology

Nov 6, 2019

Electric vehicles will only be truly competitive when they can be charged as fast as refilling a gas tank. The US Department of Energy has set a goal of developing extreme fast charging (XFC) technology that can add 200 miles of driving range in 10 min. A critical barrier to XFC is Li plating, which usually occurs at high charge rates and drastically deteriorates battery life and safety.
Here, we present an asymmetric temperature modulation (ATM) method that charges a Li-ion cell at an elevated temperature of 60°C to eliminate Li plating and limits the exposure time to 60°C to only $10 min per cycle to prevent serious materials degradation.

I love how this is somehow counterintuitive to what everyone knows about batteries (don’t overheat them!) and wonder if one day it might ever scale to smaller devices like laptops or even smart watches.

Batteries are a transitional technology on how to store energy, one that may be replaced by fuel cells sooner or later, but discoveries like this are quite interesting, as they may change considerably the lifespan of a single battery making it a more sustainable technology overall and partly changing the game on future energy storage technologies.

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