New discovery makes fast-charging, better performing lithium-ion batteries possible
Creating a lithium-ion battery that can charge in a matter of minutes but still operate at a high capacity is possible, according to research from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute just published in Nature Communications. This development has the potential to improve battery performance for consumer electronics, solar grid storage, and electric vehicles.
A lithium-ion battery charges and discharges as lithium ions move between two electrodes, called an anode and a cathode. In a traditional lithium-ion battery, the anode is made of graphite, while the cathode is composed of lithium cobalt oxide.
These materials perform well together, which is why lithium-ion batteries have become increasingly popular, but researchers at Rensselaer believe the function can be enhanced further.
“The way to make batteries better is to improve the materials used for the electrodes,” said Nikhil Koratkar, professor of mechanical, aerospace, and nuclear engineering at Rensselaer, and corresponding author of the paper. “What we are trying to do is make lithium-ion technology even better in performance.”
Koratkar’s extensive research into nanotechnology and energy storage has placed him among the most highly cited researchers in the world. In this most recent work, Koratkar and his team improved performance by substituting cobalt oxide with vanadium disulfide (VS2).
“It gives you higher energy density, because it’s light. And it gives you faster charging capability, because it’s highly conductive. From those points of view, we were attracted to this material,” said Koratkar, who is also a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.
Excitement surrounding the potential of VS2 has been growing in recent years, but until now, Koratkar said, researchers had been challenged by its instability—a characteristic that would lead to short battery life. The Rensselaer researchers not only established why that instability was happening, but also developed a way to combat it.
The team, which also included Vincent Meunier, head of the Department of Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy, and others, determined that lithium insertion caused an asymmetry in the spacing between vanadium atoms, known as Peierls distortion, which was responsible for the breakup of the VS2 flakes. They discovered that covering the flakes with a nanolayered coating of titanium disulfide (TiS2)—a material that does not Peierls distort—would stabilize the VS2 flakes and improve their performance within the battery.
