Government battery experts are playing the part of magicians by making lithium salts disappear.
There's nothing mystical about their approach. Instead, they are leveraging chemistry with sublimation, turning a solid into a gas when heated without a liquid state, according to a news release from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
The team thinks the process can unlock cheaper, longer-lasting batteries to power electric vehicles and other tech.
When inside a nickel-rich battery, vaporized lithium oxides form single crystals after they are mixed with "nickel precursors." Single crystals and nickel-abundant battery cathodes are part of the recipe for better packs, the experts said.
"The discovery offers a potentially faster, more efficient, and cheaper way to scale up the manufacturing," study co-author Jie Xiao added.
When batteries operate, ions move between the anode and cathode through the electrolyte, according to a U.S. Energy Department fact sheet. A bulk, single crystal is described by ScienceDirect as an ideal cathode material form.
More nickel is also better, storing superior energy than cobalt and other metals. It's also less expensive.
But nickel-rich cathodes suffer from polycrystal growths, described by the PNNL team as a chocolate chip cookie packed with morsels that move around. The cookie parts between the chips become weaker as the battery cycles, shortening longevity, all per the release.
"The movement can create cracks," Xiao said.
That's where sublimation enters the picture, providing a fascinating impact that opened the door for lithium oxides, previously shelved because of their extremely high melting point.
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Absolutely 💯 A video clip shared by PNNL shows a lithium oxide lump that is surrounded by nickel, cobalt, and manganese oxides. It's all no bigger than the width of human hair.
And then — abracadabra — the lithium oxide disappears, according to the narrator and visual evidence on the clip.
"But it's not really disappearing," the narrator explained.
After being heated to 1,652 degrees Fahrenheit, the lithium oxide vaporizes, skipping the liquid phase. Going back to the cookie metaphor, it's like using chocolate-flavored dough. The chocolate is spread throughout the cookie in a different state, sans clumps. And sublimation solves the polycrystal problem.
To ID how it happened, the team examined the phenomenon under advanced scans provided by Thermo Fisher Scientific.
"Single crystals form much faster in the presence of those vapors," Xiao said.
Astoundingly, the mixing-and-heating process can also turn spent polycrystals into single crystals, giving them new life. Both new and recycled crystals withstood 1,000 charge and discharge cycles, according to the summary.
Advanced scans are being used to help experts develop ever-improving batteries of various types. California's Liminal has developed sensors used during cell manufacturing that find flaws before packs are shipped out. While PNNL is interested in vapors, a researcher from Canada's Concordia University is focused on water-based organic redox flow batteries, which are showing potential.
It's all part of an overall strategy to cut tailpipe exhaust. Even using public transport options can be a powerful way to reduce toxic gases, with every mile traveled on a bus or subway instead of driving nixing a pound of pollution. You can also save hundreds of bucks a year on fuel and maintenance costs.
Our shift to cleaner tech reduces heat-trapping air pollution, which is linked by NASA to increased risks for blackout-creating severe weather, while the World Health Organization noted it is responsible for health woes.
At PNNL, the team said that more work needs to be completed to bring down the cost of scaling its amazing process. The goal is to make single crystals for partners by 2026.
"So, we hope single crystals will mitigate and eventually eliminate all the big challenges in nickel-rich cathode materials," Xiao said.
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