Tag Archives: lithium-ion battery

Transforming lithium-ion battery electrodes into wearable, fabric-based, flexible, and stretchable electrodes

There’s a long road before this technology can be commercialized but the news seems promising. From a July 26, 2023 University of Houston news release (also on EurekAlert) by Rashda Khan, Note: Links have been removed,

Most people already know and appreciate the capabilities of smart phones, now imagine the possibilities offered by smart spacesuits, uniforms and exercise clothes. The future of wearable technology just got a big boost thanks to a team of University of Houston researchers who designed, developed and delivered a successful prototype of a fully stretchable fabric-based lithium-ion battery.

The idea for this cutting-edge evolution of the lithium-ion battery came from the mind of Haleh Ardebili, Bill D. Cook Professor of Mechanical Engineering at UH. “As a big science fiction fan, I could envision a ‘science-fiction-esque future’ where our clothes are smart, interactive and powered,” she said. “It seemed a natural next step to create and integrate stretchable batteries with stretchable devices and clothing. Imagine folding or bending or stretching your laptop or phone in your pocket. Or using interactive sensors embedded in our clothes that monitor our health.”

Some of these ideas are already becoming a reality. However, like all electronics, they need power, which is where the stretchable and flexible batteries come in. A major bottleneck in the development of the next generation of electronics or wearable technology embedded in fabrics is that conventional batteries are generally rigid, which limits functionality of the items, and they use a liquid electrolyte, which raises safety concerns. The traditional organic liquid electrolytes are flammable and can lead to the possibility of the batteries catching fire or even exploding under certain conditions.

The key to the UH research team’s breakthrough lies in the researchers using conductive silver fabric as a platform and current collector.

“The weaved silver fabric was ideal for this since it mechanically deforms or stretches and still provides electrical conduction pathways necessary for the battery electrode to function well. The battery electrode must allow movement of both electrons and ions,” said Ardebili, who is the corresponding author of a paper detailing this research in the Extreme Mechanics Letters. The first author of the paper is Bahar Moradi Ghadi, a former doctoral student who based her dissertation on this research.

By transforming rigid lithium-ion battery electrodes into wearable, fabric-based, flexible, and stretchable electrodes, this technology opens up exciting possibilities by offering stable performance and safer properties for wearable devices and implantable biosensors.

How It All Started

The idea for stretchable batteries occurred to Ardebili several years ago.

“I was interested in understanding the fundamental science and mechanisms related to stretching an electrochemical cell and its components,” she said. “This was an unexplored field in science and engineering and a great area to investigate.”

The science of coupling effects of mechanical deformation and electrochemical performance is an important field and stretchable batteries provide a great vehicle for exploring the fundamental mechanisms.

Ardebili developed her ideas into grant proposals and won several key awards to support her work, including a five-year National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2013, a New Investigator Award from the NASA Texas Space Center Grant Consortium in 2014 and an award from the US Army Research Lab (ARL) in 2017.

“Although we have created a prototype, we are still working on optimizing the battery design, materials and fabrication,” said Ardebili.

What Is Next

Ardebili is optimistic that the prototype for a stretchable fabric-based battery will pave the way for many types of applications such as smart space suits, consumer electronics embedded in garments that monitor people’s health and devices that interact with humans at various levels. There are many possible designs and applications for safe, light, flexible and stretchable batteries, but there is still some work to be done before they are available on the market.

“Commercial viability depends on many factors such as scaling up the manufacturability of the product, cost and other factors,” she said. “We are working toward those considerations and goals as we optimize and enhance our stretchable battery.”

Whether the stretchy batteries end up powering spacesuits or workout clothes or some other innovative application, Ardebili wants them to be reliable and safe. “My goal is to make sure the batteries are as safe as possible [emphasis mine],” she said.

I’m glad to see safety is mentioned since there have been issues with lithium-ion batteries bursting into flame. (My last piece on research into making lithium-ion batteries safer is a January 13, 2016 post. There’s a more recent piece in the IEEE’s Spectrum magazine, an August 23, 2018 article by Weiyang Li and Yi Cui)

Getting back to the latest, here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Stretchable fabric-based lithium-ion battery by Bahar Moradi Ghadi, Banafsheh Hekmatnia, Qiang Fu, and Haleh Ardebili. Extreme Mechanics Letters
Volume 61, June 2023, 102026 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eml.2023.102026

This paper is behind a paywall.

Smartphone battery inspired by your guts?

The conversion of bacteria from an enemy to be vanquished at all costs to a ‘frenemy’, a friendly enemy supplying possible solutions for problems is fascinating. An Oct. 26, 2016 news item on Nanowerk falls into the ‘frenemy’ camp,

A new prototype of a lithium-sulphur battery – which could have five times the energy density of a typical lithium-ion battery – overcomes one of the key hurdles preventing their commercial development by mimicking the structure of the cells which allow us to absorb nutrients.

Researchers have developed a prototype of a next-generation lithium-sulphur battery which takes its inspiration in part from the cells lining the human intestine. The batteries, if commercially developed, would have five times the energy density of the lithium-ion batteries used in smartphones and other electronics.

An Oct. 26, 2016 University of Cambridge press release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, expands on the theme and provides some good explanations of how lithium-ion batteries and lithium-sulphur batteries work (Note: A link has been removed),

The new design, by researchers from the University of Cambridge, overcomes one of the key technical problems hindering the commercial development of lithium-sulphur batteries, by preventing the degradation of the battery caused by the loss of material within it. The results are reported in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.

Working with collaborators at the Beijing Institute of Technology, the Cambridge researchers based in Dr Vasant Kumar’s team in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy developed and tested a lightweight nanostructured material which resembles villi, the finger-like protrusions which line the small intestine. In the human body, villi are used to absorb the products of digestion and increase the surface area over which this process can take place.

In the new lithium-sulphur battery, a layer of material with a villi-like structure, made from tiny zinc oxide wires, is placed on the surface of one of the battery’s electrodes. This can trap fragments of the active material when they break off, keeping them electrochemically accessible and allowing the material to be reused.

“It’s a tiny thing, this layer, but it’s important,” said study co-author Dr Paul Coxon from Cambridge’s Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy. “This gets us a long way through the bottleneck which is preventing the development of better batteries.”

A typical lithium-ion battery is made of three separate components: an anode (negative electrode), a cathode (positive electrode) and an electrolyte in the middle. The most common materials for the anode and cathode are graphite and lithium cobalt oxide respectively, which both have layered structures. Positively-charged lithium ions move back and forth from the cathode, through the electrolyte and into the anode.

The crystal structure of the electrode materials determines how much energy can be squeezed into the battery. For example, due to the atomic structure of carbon, each carbon atom can take on six lithium ions, limiting the maximum capacity of the battery.

Sulphur and lithium react differently, via a multi-electron transfer mechanism meaning that elemental sulphur can offer a much higher theoretical capacity, resulting in a lithium-sulphur battery with much higher energy density. However, when the battery discharges, the lithium and sulphur interact and the ring-like sulphur molecules transform into chain-like structures, known as a poly-sulphides. As the battery undergoes several charge-discharge cycles, bits of the poly-sulphide can go into the electrolyte, so that over time the battery gradually loses active material.

The Cambridge researchers have created a functional layer which lies on top of the cathode and fixes the active material to a conductive framework so the active material can be reused. The layer is made up of tiny, one-dimensional zinc oxide nanowires grown on a scaffold. The concept was trialled using commercially-available nickel foam for support. After successful results, the foam was replaced by a lightweight carbon fibre mat to reduce the battery’s overall weight.

“Changing from stiff nickel foam to flexible carbon fibre mat makes the layer mimic the way small intestine works even further,” said study co-author Dr Yingjun Liu.

This functional layer, like the intestinal villi it resembles, has a very high surface area. The material has a very strong chemical bond with the poly-sulphides, allowing the active material to be used for longer, greatly increasing the lifespan of the battery.

“This is the first time a chemically functional layer with a well-organised nano-architecture has been proposed to trap and reuse the dissolved active materials during battery charging and discharging,” said the study’s lead author Teng Zhao, a PhD student from the Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy. “By taking our inspiration from the natural world, we were able to come up with a solution that we hope will accelerate the development of next-generation batteries.”

For the time being, the device is a proof of principle, so commercially-available lithium-sulphur batteries are still some years away. Additionally, while the number of times the battery can be charged and discharged has been improved, it is still not able to go through as many charge cycles as a lithium-ion battery. However, since a lithium-sulphur battery does not need to be charged as often as a lithium-ion battery, it may be the case that the increase in energy density cancels out the lower total number of charge-discharge cycles.

“This is a way of getting around one of those awkward little problems that affects all of us,” said Coxon. “We’re all tied in to our electronic devices – ultimately, we’re just trying to make those devices work better, hopefully making our lives a little bit nicer.”

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Advanced Lithium–Sulfur Batteries Enabled by a Bio-Inspired Polysulfide Adsorptive Brush by Teng Zhao, Yusheng Ye, Xiaoyu Peng, Giorgio Divitini, Hyun-Kyung Kim, Cheng-Yen Lao, Paul R. Coxon, Kai Xi, Yingjun Liu, Caterina Ducati, Renjie Chen, R. Vasant Kumar. Advanced Functional Materials DOI: 10.1002/adfm.201604069 First published: 26 October 2016

This paper is behind a paywall.

Caption: This is a computer visualization of villi-like battery material. Credit: Teng Zhao

Caption: This is a computer visualization of villi-like battery material. Credit: Teng Zhao

The volatile lithium-ion battery

On the heels of Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 recall due to fires (see Alex Fitzpatrick’s Sept. 9, 2016 article for Time magazine for a good description of lithium-ion batteries and why they catch fire; see my May 29, 2013 posting on lithium-ion batteries, fires [including the airplane fires], and nanotechnology risk assessments), there’s new research on lithium-ion batteries and fires from China. From an Oct. 21, 2016 news item on Nanotechnology Now,

Dozens of dangerous gases are produced by the batteries found in billions of consumer devices, like smartphones and tablets, according to a new study. The research, published in Nano Energy, identified more than 100 toxic gases released by lithium batteries, including carbon monoxide.

An Oct. 20, 2016 Elsevier Publishing press release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, expands on the theme,

The gases are potentially fatal, they can cause strong irritations to the skin, eyes and nasal passages, and harm the wider environment. The researchers behind the study, from the Institute of NBC Defence and Tsinghua University in China, say many people may be unaware of the dangers of overheating, damaging or using a disreputable charger for their rechargeable devices.

In the new study, the researchers investigated a type of rechargeable battery, known as a “lithium-ion” battery, which is placed in two billion consumer devices every year.

“Nowadays, lithium-ion batteries are being actively promoted by many governments all over the world as a viable energy solution to power everything from electric vehicles to mobile devices. The lithium-ion battery is used by millions of families, so it is imperative that the general public understand the risks behind this energy source,” explained Dr. Jie Sun, lead author and professor at the Institute of NBC Defence.

The dangers of exploding batteries have led manufacturers to recall millions of devices: Dell recalled four million laptops in 2006 and millions of Samsung Galaxy Note 7 devices were recalled this month after reports of battery fires. But the threats posed by toxic gas emissions and the source of these emissions are not well understood.

Dr. Sun and her colleagues identified several factors that can cause an increase in the concentration of the toxic gases emitted. A fully charged battery will release more toxic gases than a battery with 50 percent charge, for example. The chemicals contained in the batteries and their capacity to release charge also affected the concentrations and types of toxic gases released.

Identifying the gases produced and the reasons for their emission gives manufacturers a better understanding of how to reduce toxic emissions and protect the wider public, as lithium-ion batteries are used in a wide range of environments.

“Such dangerous substances, in particular carbon monoxide, have the potential to cause serious harm within a short period of time if they leak inside a small, sealed environment, such as the interior of a car or an airplane compartment,” Dr. Sun said.

Almost 20,000 lithium-ion batteries were heated to the point of combustion in the study, causing most devices to explode and all to emit a range of toxic gases. Batteries can be exposed to such temperature extremes in the real world, for example, if the battery overheats or is damaged in some way.

The researchers now plan to develop this detection technique to improve the safety of lithium-ion batteries so they can be used to power the electric vehicles of the future safely.

“We hope this research will allow the lithium-ion battery industry and electric vehicle sector to continue to expand and develop with a greater understanding of the potential hazards and ways to combat these issues,” Sun concluded.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Toxicity, a serious concern of thermal runaway from commercial Li-ion battery by Jie Sun, Jigang Li, Tian Zhou, Kai Yang, Shouping Wei, Na Tang, Nannan Dang, Hong Li, Xinping Qiu, Liquan Chend. Nano Energy Volume 27, September 2016, Pages 313–319  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nanoen.2016.06.031

This paper appears to be open access.

No more kevlar-wrapped lithium-ion batteries?

Current lithium-ion batteries present a fire hazard, which is why, last, year a team of researchers at the University of Michigan came up with a plan to prevent fires by wrapping the batteries in kevlar. My Jan. 30, 2015 post describes the research and provides some information about airplane fires caused by the use of lithium-ion batteries.

This year, a team of researchers at Stanford University (US) have invented a lithium-ion (li-ion) battery that shuts itself down when it overheats, according to a Jan. 12, 2016 news item on Nanotechnology Now,

Stanford researchers have developed the first lithium-ion battery that shuts down before overheating, then restarts immediately when the temperature cools.

The new technology could prevent the kind of fires that have prompted recalls and bans on a wide range of battery-powered devices, from recliners and computers to navigation systems and hoverboards [and on airplanes].

“People have tried different strategies to solve the problem of accidental fires in lithium-ion batteries,” said Zhenan Bao, a professor of chemical engineering at Stanford. “We’ve designed the first battery that can be shut down and revived over repeated heating and cooling cycles without compromising performance.”

Stanford has produced a video of Dr. Bao discussing her latest work,

A Jan. 11, 2016 Stanford University news release by Mark Schwartz, which originated the news item, provides more detail about li-ion batteries and the new fire prevention technology,

A typical lithium-ion battery consists of two electrodes and a liquid or gel electrolyte that carries charged particles between them. Puncturing, shorting or overcharging the battery generates heat. If the temperature reaches about 300 degrees Fahrenheit (150 degrees Celsius), the electrolyte could catch fire and trigger an explosion.

Several techniques have been used to prevent battery fires, such as adding flame retardants to the electrolyte. In 2014, Stanford engineer Yi Cui created a “smart” battery that provides ample warning before it gets too hot.

“Unfortunately, these techniques are irreversible, so the battery is no longer functional after it overheats,” said study co-author Cui, an associate professor of materials science and engineering and of photon science. “Clearly, in spite of the many efforts made thus far, battery safety remains an important concern and requires a new approach.”

Nanospikes

To address the problem Cui, Bao and postdoctoral scholar Zheng Chen turned to nanotechnology. Bao recently invented a wearable sensor to monitor human body temperature. The sensor is made of a plastic material embedded with tiny particles of nickel with nanoscale spikes protruding from their surface.

For the battery experiment, the researchers coated the spiky nickel particles with graphene, an atom-thick layer of carbon, and embedded the particles in a thin film of elastic polyethylene.

“We attached the polyethylene film to one of the battery electrodes so that an electric current could flow through it,” said Chen, lead author of the study. “To conduct electricity, the spiky particles have to physically touch one another. But during thermal expansion, polyethylene stretches. That causes the particles to spread apart, making the film nonconductive so that electricity can no longer flow through the battery.”

When the researchers heated the battery above 160 F (70 C), the polyethylene film quickly expanded like a balloon, causing the spiky particles to separate and the battery to shut down. But when the temperature dropped back down to 160 F (70 C), the polyethylene shrunk, the particles came back into contact, and the battery started generating electricity again.

“We can even tune the temperature higher or lower depending on how many particles we put in or what type of polymer materials we choose,” said Bao, who is also a professor, by courtesy, of chemistry and of materials science and engineering. “For example, we might want the battery to shut down at 50 C or 100 C.”

Reversible strategy

To test the stability of new material, the researchers repeatedly applied heat to the battery with a hot-air gun. Each time, the battery shut down when it got too hot and quickly resumed operating when the temperature cooled.

“Compared with previous approaches, our design provides a reliable, fast, reversible strategy that can achieve both high battery performance and improved safety,” Cui said. “This strategy holds great promise for practical battery applications.”

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Fast and reversible thermoresponsive polymer switching materials for safer batteries by Zheng Chen, Po-Chun Hsu, Jeffrey Lopez, Yuzhang Li, John W. F. To, Nan Liu, Chao Wang, Sean C. Andrews, Jia Liu, Yi Cui, & Zhenan Bao. Nature Energy 1, Article number: 15009 (2016) doi:10.1038/nenergy.2015.9 Published online: 11 January 2016

This paper appears to be open access.

Anyone have a spare portabella (also known as, portobello) mushroom? I need for my phone

Scientists as the University of California at Riverside (UCR) have developed a type of lithium-ion battery with portabella mushrooms, from a Sept. 29, 2015 news item on ScienceDaily,

Can portabella mushrooms stop cell phone batteries from degrading over time?

Researchers at the University of California, Riverside Bourns College of Engineering think so.

They have created a new type of lithium-ion battery anode using portabella mushrooms, which are inexpensive, environmentally friendly and easy to produce. The current industry standard for rechargeable lithium-ion battery anodes is synthetic graphite, which comes with a high cost of manufacturing because it requires tedious purification and preparation processes that are also harmful to the environment.

A Sept. 29, 2015 UCR news release (also on EurekAlert) by Sean Nealon, which originated the news item, expands on the theme,

With the anticipated increase in batteries needed for electric vehicles and electronics, a cheaper and sustainable source to replace graphite is needed. Using biomass, a biological material from living or recently living organisms, as a replacement for graphite, has drawn recent attention because of its high carbon content, low cost and environmental friendliness.

UC Riverside engineers were drawn to using mushrooms as a form of biomass because past research has established they are highly porous, meaning they have a lot of small spaces for liquid or air to pass through. That porosity is important for batteries because it creates more space for the storage and transfer of energy, a critical component to improving battery performance.

In addition, the high potassium salt concentration in mushrooms allows for increased electrolyte-active material over time by activating more pores, gradually increasing its capacity.

A conventional anode allows lithium to fully access most of the material during the first few cycles and capacity fades from electrode damage occurs from that point on. The mushroom carbon anode technology could, with optimization, replace graphite anodes. It also provides a binderless and current-collector free approach to anode fabrication.

“With battery materials like this, future cell phones may see an increase in run time after many uses, rather than a decrease, due to apparent activation of blind pores within the carbon architectures as the cell charges and discharges over time,” said Brennan Campbell, a graduate student in the Materials Science and Engineering program at UC Riverside.

Nanocarbon architectures derived from biological materials such as mushrooms can be considered a green and sustainable alternative to graphite-based anodes, said Cengiz Ozkan, a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and engineering.

The nano-ribbon-like architectures transform upon heat treatment into an interconnected porous network architecture which is important for battery electrodes because such architectures possess a very large surface area for the storage of energy, a critical component to improving battery performance.

One of the problems with conventional carbons, such as graphite, is that they are typically prepared with chemicals such as acids and activated by bases that are not environmentally friendly, said Mihri Ozkan, a professor of electrical and computer engineering. Therefore, the UC Riverside team is focused on naturally-derived carbons, such as the skin of the caps of portabella mushrooms, for making batteries.

It is expected that nearly 900,000 tons of natural raw graphite would be needed for anode fabrication for nearly six million electric vehicle forecast to be built by 2020. This requires that the graphite be treated with harsh chemicals, including hydrofluoric and sulfuric acids, a process that creates large quantities of hazardous waste. The European Union projects this process will be unsustainable in the future.

Here’s link to and a citation for the paper,

Hierarchically Porous Carbon Anodes for Li-ion Batteries by Brennan Campbell, Robert Ionescu, Zachary Favors, Cengiz S. Ozkan, & Mihrimah Ozkan. [Nature] Scientific Reports 5, Article number: 14575 (2015)  doi:10.1038/srep14575 Published online: 29 September 2015

This is an open access paper