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Sep 10, 2019

Stretchy plastic electrolytes could enable new lithium-ion battery design

Posted by in category: materials

The growing popularity of lithium-ion batteries in recent years has put a strain on the world’s supply of cobalt and nickel—two metals integral to current battery designs—and sent prices surging.

In a bid to develop alternative designs for lithium-based batteries with less reliance on those , researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a promising new and system that replaces expensive metals and traditional liquid electrolyte with lower cost transition metal fluorides and a .

“Electrodes made from transition metal fluorides have long shown stability problems and rapid failure, leading to significant skepticism about their ability to be used in next generation batteries,” said Gleb Yushin, a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Materials Science and Engineering. “But we’ve shown that when used with a solid polymer electrolyte, the metal fluorides show remarkable stability—even at —which could eventually lead to safer, lighter and cheaper lithium-ion batteries.”

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