Wednesday, April 02, 2014: In a recent development that could trigger better performance at a lower cost, researchers at USC Viterbi School of Engineering have successfully built Li-ion batteries using cheaper and high-performance materials as anode and cathode.
The research shows that using silicon as anode instead of graphite can lead to drastic increase in performance of Li-ion batteries. One Silicon atom can bond with up to 3.75 Lithium atoms, however, in the case of graphite, six Carbon atoms are required for one Lithium atom. Now, the capacity of Li-ion battery depends on the number of Lithium ions that can be stored in electrodes. Silicon with a capacity of 3600 milliamp hour per gram (ten times better than graphite) is therefore a viable substitute to graphite.
Professor Chongwu Zhou and his team of researchers had earlier succeeded in solving the pulverisation issue of electrodes owing to volume expansion and retraction when using Silicon. However, their method was far too expensive to be commercially viable. Learning a lesson from the past, the team has now developed a cost-effective method for producing porous silicon particles that could be employed as anodes. Meanwhile, a graduate student Jiepeng Rong has worked out a way to further improve battery performance by coating sulphur powder with graphene oxide.
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