"Salt" battery performance may be better than lithium battery

Lithium batteries are familiar to everyone. Apple's iPhones, iPads, etc. are equipped with lithium batteries because lithium batteries have a very high battery capacity and practical cycle life. It took only a short time to implement this process to popularize. But a new material study is expected to break the rule of lithium batteries.

According to relevant reports, a materials science research team led by famous Chinese materials scientists Baozhenan and Cuiyi successfully developed a new type of sodium ion battery cathode material. The material has a very high battery capacity and a significant increase in cycle life, and it is expected to replace the expensive lithium-ion batteries due to limited mineral resources.

Limited reserves of mineral resources, lithium batteries need to be replaced in the future

Lithium batteries are now widely used. Lithium batteries are found in many electricity-related industries. As the most reliable battery at the current mobile end, lithium-ion batteries have a higher energy density and a more complete charging and discharging depth. It dominates the vast majority of applications such as mobile phones, computers, and electric cars that require rechargeable batteries. Due to the explosive growth of the lithium battery market, the demand has also increased on a large scale. In the past, the production capacity has already met the needs of the entire market. Therefore, the production capacity in the market has also led to leapfrog growth due to the scale of processing. Production, The intensification of the mining of lithium ore has led to the early depletion of lithium ore, which is a limited reserve, so lithium batteries need to be replaced by some more practical batteries in the future.

Salt may be a lifesaver, and sodium batteries are invaluable

To solve the problem of limited reserves of lithium ore resources, scientists have focused their research on sodium, another element that is next to lithium on the periodic table. Because of its proximity to the elemental cycle, some of the characteristics of sodium are very similar to those of lithium. Moreover, sodium has an unparalleled advantage in lithium. It is that the sodium resources on Earth are quite abundant, and it can even be said that it is "impossible to be exhausted.", The vast sea is full of sodium, and the salt we eat at our table is sodium. There is also a very commercial reason. Using sodium ions as battery material costs only one percent of lithium batteries, which greatly reduces the cost of merchants.

Sodium batteries are still far from being used, and research needs to continue.

Although sodium batteries have many advantages, there is still a long way to go before true scale production and use. First, Baozhenan's team only initially solved the problem of the recycling life of cathode materials. After many experiments, after 50 cycles of charging and electricity, the capacity of the Na2C6O6 electrode has dropped by about 10 %, although this result has made substantial breakthroughs. But to really become a power source circulating on the market, it must go through hundreds or even thousands of cycles and remain "firm."

Second, the study focused only on the cathode material of sodium batteries, and the anode material is also important if the sodium battery is to be truly born. It is also difficult and lengthy to develop materials suitable for use as anode materials for sodium batteries.

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