Lithium-ion batteries power transportation and grid storage and enable our digital lives, but these ubiquitous batteries require frequent recharging and can fail over time.
To make batteries more reliable and longer lasting, researchers are exploring how to replace liquids inside batteries with a solid ceramic substance that could improve their performance.
But researchers must first overcome a big problem: intrusions filled with lithium that form within the solid material during charging, causing the batteries to quickly short-circuit. When that happens, devices powered by these batteries become useless.
Researchers have long debated whether these cracks and the lithium metal inside them, called dendrites, form at the surface or inside the solid material – a key insight needed to figure out how to stop them from forming.
Now, in a study published in the journal Nature, researchers have discovered a way to both track these dendrites and suppress them enough to keep the battery from short-circuiting.
“We want to make reliable, energy-dense batteries that are fast charging,” said Teng Cui, who conducted the research while a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University and part of a team at the SLAC-Stanford Battery Center – a partnership between the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the Stanford Precourt Institute for Energy. “This research shows us several of the steps that need to happen to make that possible.”
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