Researchers close to doubling battery life for electric cars

RESEARCHERS at Daresbury, near Warrington and in the US, have made a major breakthrough in understanding a potentially game-changing battery material that could shake up the market for electric vehicles.
Using a super-powerful electron microscope that can pinpoint single atoms a million times smaller than a human hair, researchers have now identified the structure of lithium-and manganese-rich transition metal oxides.
These materials can potentially be used to make batteries with capacities double that of the most commonly used Lithium-ion batteries which, despite being important sources for energy storage for consumer electronics and transportation, have not caught up with the demand for the world’s energy consumption over the last couple of decades.
The research was carried out in large parts at the SuperSTEM National Facility, which is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and located at the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s (STFC) Daresbury Laboratory.
SuperSTEM National Facility is home to a super-powerful electron microscope that is one of only three in the world.
Professor Quentin Ramasse (pictured), Director at SuperSTEM, said: “This research, which solves a decade-long debate about the structure of lithium-and manganese-rich transition metal oxides, could mean that the battery life in electric cars will last considerably longer in the very nearfuture: longer range, more convenience, all should contribute to more of those green vehicles on the road and a significant contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We need to know what goes on at the atomic scale in order to understand the macroscopic behaviour of such new emerging materials and the advanced electron microscopes available at national facilities such as SuperSTEM are essential in making sure their potential is fully realised.”
Previous studies about this material have been ambiguous, but using the state-of-the-art electron microscopy techniques at Daresbury and in the US, the researchers successfully imaged the material one atom at a time, from all possible directions, to gather the three-dimensional information needed to solve the material’s structure.
Alpesh Khushalchand Shukla from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the US is lead author of the paper and a visiting research associate at SuperSTEM. He said: “In spite of its increased capacity, the battery industry has so far been reluctant to introduce this new chemistry for commercial applications due to practical issues such as voltage and capacity fade or DC resistance rise. By solving the surface and bulk structure of this material, we have inched closer to mitigating these issues”