THE WAY AHEAD
A NEW STRUCTURAL BATTERY TO IMPROVE THINGS WE DO?
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have presented a revolutionary advance in massless energy storage. They have devised a structural battery that could halve the weight of a laptop, make the mobile phone as thin as a credit card or increase the driving range of an electric car by up to 70 percent on a single charge.
Basically, structural batteries are materials that can carry loads in addition to storing energy. This means the battery material becomes a part of the actual construction material of a product, which in turn means much lower weight can be achieved in electric cars, laptops, mobile phones, drones or hand-held tools.
When these are built from a material that functions as a battery as well as a load-bearing structure, the weight and energy consumption are radically reduced. The concept is based on a composite material and has carbon fibre as the positive and negative electrodes. The positive electrode is coated with lithium iron phosphate.
The carbon fibre used in the electrode material is multifunctional. In the anode it acts as a reinforcement, as well as an electrical collector and active material. In the cathode it acts as a reinforcement, current collector, and as a scaffolding for the lithium to build on. Since the carbon fibre conducts the electron current, the need for current collectors made of copper or aluminium, for example, is reduced, which reduces the overall weight even further.
Also, there are no so-called conflict metals such as cobalt or manganese required in the chosen electrode design, which makes it simpler for operations. This advance has been published in the article “Unveiling the Multifunctional Carbon Fibre Structural Battery” in the journal Advanced Materials.