Researchers from McGill University and Université du Québec à Montreal (UQAM) have found a new approach to making inexpensive batteries that can not only hold large amounts of charge but also recharge quickly.
Their work focuses on improving lithium ion batteries, rechargeable cells that are used in electric vehicles, power tools, phones and more.
“The work that we’ve done at the CLS is going to open up the door to be able to make batteries that can be charged faster, which will be one of the ways that we can start implementing them in real use cases as soon as possible,” says McGill researcher Jeremy Dawkins, the lead author of a recent paper on the work published in the journal ChemElectroChem.
To understand how a battery performs, researchers need to see what’s going on inside while it is being used. This is challenging to do in most labs, but the Canadian Light Source (CLS) synchrotron at the University of Saskatchewan (USask) offers the bright, intense x-ray light required to peer into a working battery.
Lithium ion batteries can be made of a combination of different materials, which researchers tweak to get the performance they want.
Read more on CLS website