HOUSTON, Feb. 6 (Xinhua) -- A team of researchers led by a Texas A&M University chemist has discovered unique material which may help develop more powerful battery, the university said Monday in a press release.
Led by chemist Sarbajit Banerjee, the team has discovered an exceptional metal-oxide magnesium battery cathode material, which might deliver batteries with higher density of energy storage and transformative advances in safety, cost and performance compared to lithium-ion (Li-ion).
"The worldwide push to advance renewable energy is limited by the availability of energy storage vectors," Banerjee said, adding that lithium-ion technology dominates currently, yet the safety and long-term supply of lithium remain serious concerns.
"By contrast, magnesium is much more abundant than lithium, which has a higher melting point, forms smooth surfaces when recharging, and has the potential to deliver more than a five-fold increase in energy density if an appropriate cathode can be identified," Banerjee said.
Ironically, the team's futuristic solution hinges on a redesigned form of an old Li-ion cathode material, vanadium pentoxide, which is proved capable of reversibly inserting magnesium ions.
"We've essentially reconfigured the atoms to provide a different pathway for magnesium ions to travel along, thereby obtaining a viable cathode material in which they can readily be inserted and extracted during discharging and charging of the battery," Banerjee said.
This rare phenomenon was achieved by limiting the location of the magnesium ions to relatively uncomfortable atomic positions by design, based on the way the vanadium pentoxide was made -- a property known as metastability.
The metastability helps prevent the magnesium ions from getting trapped in the material and promotes complete harvesting of their charge-storing capacity with negligible degradation of the material after many charge-recharge cycles.
The research marks an important turning point because it represents a significant advance toward solving the cathode problem while highlighting the inherent advantages of using more imaginative and metastable materials, said Justin Andrews, first author of the team's paper.
"While this research has provided a great deal of insight, there are still several other fundamental problems to overcome before magnesium batteries become a reality," Andrews added.
