Lithium anode is the 'Holy grail' of battery design

28 July 2014 - 12:44 By Times LIVE
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Researchers at Stanford University have found the ‘holy grail’ of battery design.

A paper published in Nature Nanotechnology details a major step in better battery design: a pure lithium anode. What we call lithium batteries today are in fact lithium ion batteries. The creation of an anode of pure lithium will be a massive boost to battery efficiency according to a report by Phys.org.

An anode is an electrode through which positive charge flows into a polarised electrical device.

“Of all the materials that one might use in an anode, lithium has the greatest potential,” said Yi Cui the research team leader. “It is very lightweight and has the highest energy density."

“Many researchers have given up the search, but we have found a way to protect the lithium from problems that have plagued it for so long,” said Guangyuan Zheng, author of the first paper.

Lithium still presents some challenges - as its anode expands it creates dendrites which short circuit the battery. Removing those dendrites is the next step in making a pure lithium battery possible.

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