Ultra-powerful batteries made safer, more efficientTeam aims…

Ultra-powerful batteries made safer, more efficient

Team aims to curb formation of harmful crystal-like masses in lithium metal batteries

From smartphones to electric vehicles, many of today’s technologies run on lithium ion batteries. That means that consumers have to keep their chargers handy. An iPhone X battery only lasts for 21 hours of talk time, and Tesla’s model S has a 335-mile range – which means you could expect to make it from Newark, Delaware to Providence, Rhode Island, but not all the way to Boston, on one charge.

Scientists all over the world – including even the inventor of lithium ion batteries himself, John Goodenough – are looking for ways to make rechargeable batteries safer, lighter, and more powerful.

Now, an international team of researchers led by Bingqing Wei, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Delaware and the director of the Center for Fuel Cells and Batteries, is doing work that could lay the foundation for more widespread use of lithium metal batteries that would have more capacity than the lithium ion batteries commonly used in consumer electronics today. The team developed a method to mitigate dendrite formation in lithium metal batteries, which they have described in a paper published in Nano Letters.

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