Dreaming of the day when a stop at the charging station will be as brief as stopping for gas?
In an article published in the journal
Joule, a research team from McGill University and the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) announces the development of an innovative method that allows real-time observation of the physical processes occurring within the liquid and solid components of lithium-ion battery cells, commonly referred to as "Li-ion batteries."
This breakthrough provides a deeper understanding of the factors affecting the charging and discharging rates of Li-ion batteries, which could accelerate the charging of commonplace, if not essential, electronic devices and electric vehicles, such as laptops, cell phones, and electric bikes, scooters, and cars.
Led by Janine Mauzeroll and Steen B. Schougaard, both chemistry professors at McGill and UQAM respectively, the research team collaborated with a synchrotron radiation facility, the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF). With the help of highly intense X-rays, the team was able to observe, in real-time, the lithium concentration changes occurring in the cells of a Li-ion battery during charging and discharging.
"During battery charging or discharging, lithium moves within the cell, both through a liquid electrolyte and a solid active material, and the speed of its journey is generally dependent on how quickly it can transfer from one side of the cell to the other, traversing these two phases," explains Jeremy Dawkins, who worked on this project as a doctoral student in the labs of Professors Schougaard and Mauzeroll. "We are the first to describe a method that can track lithium movement in both the liquid and solid phases of an operating Li-ion battery and simultaneously quantify a cell's performance at the molecular level."
This advance could have implications not only for highly specialized battery research but also for everyday users of electronic devices and electric vehicles. "The significance of this work is that it provides research teams with an innovative tool to study Li-ion battery performance, opening up prospects that were previously not conceivable," continues Jeremy Dawkins. "We hope that it will propel battery research forward more quickly, such as by enabling a much faster improvement of electrode architecture. The performance of the batteries we use every day could be significantly enhanced."
The research team is delighted to have successfully completed the study despite COVID-19. The researchers from McGill and UQAM were in Montreal, Canada, but the ESRF, the facility where the calculations were made, is located in Grenoble, France. In 2020, when public authorities restricted travel due to the pandemic, the fate of the study suddenly became uncertain. "The Faculties of Science at McGill and at UQAM granted exemptions that allowed team members to travel so that the assessments could be carried out," recalls Professor Mauzeroll. "Our colleagues at the ESRF in France went to great lengths to evaluate our samples in the midst of the pandemic," adds Jeremy Dawkins. "Thanks to determination and a good bit of luck, we managed to perform the necessary evaluations within the limited time we had."
The study 'Mapping the total lithium inventory of Li-ion batteries' by Jeremy Dawkins, Janine Mauzeroll, et al, was published in
Joule.