New electrode design may lead to more powerful batteries

Date posted
Funding Agency
(Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation)

New research by engineers at MIT, the University of Central Florida, the University of Texas at Austin, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and Hong Kong Polytechnic University could lead to batteries that can pack more power per pound and last longer, based on the long-sought goal of using pure lithium metal as one of the battery's two electrodes, the anode. To form the anode, the researchers developed a three-dimensional nanoarchitecture in the form of a honeycomb-like array of hexagonal tubes, partially infused with solid lithium metal. The hexagonal tubes are about 100 to 300 nanometers in diameter and tens of microns in height.