Chinese American scientists make breakthroughs in aluminum battery research

Aluminum is considered as an attractive battery material, but commercially viable aluminum batteries have not yet come out. A research group led by Chinese people at Stanford University in the United States published a research report in the online edition of Nature magazine on the 6th. They introduced that their newly developed aluminum batteries are characterized by high efficiency, durability, ultra-fast charging, low flammability, and low cost. Become a safe alternative to conventional batteries.

For a long time, the main problem of aluminum battery research without real breakthrough is battery materials. Suitable anode material and electrolyte material are the key to ensure that the battery can still operate after repeated cycles of charging and discharging. The research team leader Dai Hongjie, a Chinese professor at the Department of Chemistry at Stanford University, told Xinhua News Agency reporters that they used graphite as a negative electrode material. They tested several well-performing graphite materials and used a plasma liquid equivalent to a salt solution as the electrolyte. This solves the bottleneck problem in aluminum materials research.

The researchers fabricated a new aluminum battery by placing a positive electrode made of aluminum, a negative electrode using graphite, and a plasma electrolyte in a polymer-coated aluminum foil pouch. Dai Hongjie said that the aluminum ion batteries they developed can be charged and discharged, with the outstanding advantages of ultra-fast charging, non-flammable explosion, folding, and low material cost. He said: "This is a major breakthrough in the development of rechargeable aluminum batteries, because the previous rechargeable aluminum batteries basically do not exist, especially aluminum batteries with these properties."

The researchers said that because the plasma electrolyte will not burn, aluminum and graphite are also not easy to burn, so this aluminum battery is very safe. The research report shows that in order to test the safety of aluminum batteries, the researchers drilled holes in the batteries. The batteries did not explode and they could still run for a while.

In addition to high safety, aluminum batteries using new technologies also have important breakthroughs in performance. For example, an aluminum battery takes only about 1 minute to complete ultra-fast charging. In the experiment, after more than 7500 charging and discharging cycles of the aluminum battery, the electric capacity was not lost. In comparison, aluminum cells of other research institutes are generally unavailable after about 100 cycles, and lithium batteries can only withstand about 1,000 cycles. In addition, since aluminum and graphite are flexible materials, aluminum batteries can be bent and folded without affecting performance.

Dai Hongjie said that the aluminum batteries they developed could replace alkaline batteries that are prone to environmental pollution and lithium-ion batteries that have flammable risks. In the future, this type of aluminum battery can also be used to store renewable energy in the power grid, as well as electric vehicles. However, the current aluminum battery technology needs further improvement, such as the need to increase the energy density of aluminum batteries.