Electric Car, Battery | Harvard researchers believe they have found the “Holy Grail” for electric cars

Much better range, much shorter charging time – and much longer service life.

High weight. Slow charging. Limited range. Takes up a lot of space.

There has been a rapid development in battery technology in recent decades, but the basic technology used in today’s lithium-ion batteries has problems that cannot be solved without new thinking.

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And now Harvard researchers have published new research in Nature, which may be the breakthrough one has been waiting for:

“A lithium-metal battery is considered the holy grail of battery chemistry because of its high capacity and energy density,” said Xin Li, professor of materials science. The Harvard Gazette.

– The problem has always been that the stability of this type of battery has been poor, he points out.

So-called solid state batteries replace the liquid electrolyte in the batteries. It brings down the weight and resistance, and up the capacity.

Needles grow in batteries

Researchers have long known that this type of battery has superior properties, but they have had a significant problem:

During use, needle-like structures form in the battery called dendrites, which grow like roots through the anode. These can then grow through the barrier between the anode and the cathode in the batteries, thus short-circuiting the entire sulamite.

The goal for a long time has been to prevent these dendrites from occurring, but Harvard researchers have instead opted for a solution where they control growth and ensure that they cannot spread.

Specifically, they have built up the battery with several layers, where the dendrite is allowed to grow through the graphite and a first layer of electrolytes, but stops in the second layer.

Long shelf life

In the research article, they write that their test battery still had 82 percent of its capacity left after 10,000 charging cycles.

If you drain the car battery once every single day, it is equivalent to 27 years of use.

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Enormous capacity

Today’s batteries take up a lot of space and weigh a lot, while the solid state batteries that Harvard researchers have now tested have impressive properties:

– Our design allows for 110.6 kW per kilo, and a storage density up to 631.1 Wh per kilo, they write.

Theoretically, this means that you can get a 63 kWh battery of only 100 kg. In a battery pack, it is true that there is more than just battery cells, but for comparison, the 80 kWh battery pack on a Mercedes EQC weighs 650 kg.

The high power of the batteries also means that they can be charged very quickly.

“The battery can pave the way for cars to be fully charged in 10-20 minutes,” writes the Harvard Gazette.

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