A battery research collaboration focusing on lithium-ion alternatives is starting at MAX IV. The collaboration involving Swedish and Danish universities is a pilot for the new HUB user access mode.
Battery technology is an important Swedish and Nordic research area, something that has been underscored, not least by recent initiatives by the Swedish Government. The challenge of finding new, effective and sustainable lithium-ion battery alternatives is a complex and multifaceted task that requires collaboration between experts in different areas. This need motivated the new Battery pilot HUB, including Chalmers University of Technology, Uppsala University, Lund University, Aarhus University and MAX IV.
We spoke to Aleksandar Matic from Chalmers University of Technology, one of the partners in the newly formed Battery HUB collaboration named BatMAX and Joachim Schnadt, MAX IV Science Director.
“We’re going to study sodium-ion batteries, a promising battery technology for the future. Sodium-ion batteries can store about the same amount of energy as a conventional lithium-ion battery, but have several important advantages. Sodium is more abundant and evenly spread globally as a raw material since it can be extracted from seawater. Sodium-ion batteries are also more sustainable because the cathode materials do not contain cobalt, which is often used in lithium-ion battery cathodes,” says Matic.
Read more on the MAX IV website