A counterintuitive finding revealed by high-precision powder diffraction analyses suggests a new strategy for building better batteries
UPTON, NY—Engineers strive to design smartphones with longer-lasting batteries, electric vehicles that can drive for hundreds of miles on a single charge, and a reliable power grid that can store renewable energy for future use. Each of these technologies is within reach—that is, if scientists can build better cathode materials.
To date, the typical strategy for enhancing cathode materials has been to alter their chemical composition. But now, chemists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have made a new finding about battery performance that points to a different strategy for optimizing cathode materials. Their research, published in Chemistry of Materials and featured in ACS Editors’ Choice, focuses on controlling the amount of structural defects in the cathode material.
“Instead of changing the chemical composition of the cathode, we can alter the arrangement of its atoms,” said corresponding author Peter Khalifah, a chemist at Brookhaven Lab and Stony Brook University.
>Read more on the NSLS-II at Brookhaven Lab website
Image: Corresponding author Peter Khalifah (left) with his students/co-authors Gerard Mattei (center) and Zhuo Li (right) at one of Brookhaven’s chemistry labs.