Chinese scholars pioneered dual-ion battery technology

The latest achievements of researcher Tang Yongbing and his research team at Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, have recently been published in the top international energy materials journal "Advanced Energy Materials", and then invited by the German science network "Wissenschaft aktuell" to report, widely concerned
by the industry.
If this technology is industrialized, it will have a significant impact on
the existing lithium battery industry structure.

At present, the main energy conversion and storage equipment in portable electronic devices, electric vehicles, renewable energy systems and other fields are lithium-ion batteries, but commercial lithium-ion batteries have low energy density, high manufacturing costs, and the electrode materials of traditional lithium-ion batteries contain toxic metals, and battery waste will cause serious environmental problems
.
In particular, the current demand for new energy vehicle power battery industry is hot, but the current power battery technology is still a gully before the development of new energy vehicles
.
Whether lithium-ion battery pack-powered electric vehicles or fuel cell-powered electric vehicles, there are cost and range challenges
.

The new high-energy density aluminum-graphite dual-ion battery discovered by Tang Yongbing's team is a new high-efficiency and low-cost energy storage battery
.

This new type of battery adjusts the positive and negative electrodes of traditional lithium-ion batteries, and replaces lithium cobalt oxide, lithium manganate, ternary or lithium iron phosphate, which has been massively used in lithium-ion batteries, as the cathode materials of batteries with cheap and readily available graphite.
Aluminum foil is used as the battery anode material and negative current collector at the same time; The electrolyte consists of
conventional lithium salts and carbonate-based organic solvents.
The working principle of the battery is different from that of traditional lithium-ion batteries: during the charging process, the positive electrode graphite undergoes an anion intercalation reaction, while the aluminum anode undergoes an aluminum-lithium alloying reaction, and the discharge process is reversed
.
This new reaction mechanism not only significantly improves the working voltage of the battery (3.
8-4.
6V), but also greatly reduces the quality, volume, and manufacturing cost of the battery, thereby comprehensively improving the energy density
of the whole battery.

If this technology is industrialized, future mobile phones may be half thinner and thinner than today, and our smartphones no longer need to be charged once a day, which solves the key problems
of high cost of electric vehicle batteries and short range.
However, at present, the battery technology needs to be optimized, such as the need to further improve the cycle stability of the battery
.

In recent years, new energy vehicles have swept the world with the support of policies, and the upstream of the industry has also ushered in an outbreak
under many advantages.
Leading battery factories in the world have set up factories
in China.
Although the continuous prosperity of the new energy vehicle market has driven the battery industry, whether it is a pure electric power battery or a hydrogen-fueled fuel cell, there are still technical cost and range challenges
.
At present, the global demand for lithium batteries is growing at an annual rate of 7.
7%, and its market will reach $120 billion by 2019 (according to the market research of the US Freedonia Group).

According to the statistics of motor vehicle factory certificate, in December 2015, China's new energy vehicle production was 99,800 units, a year-on-year increase of three times
.
Miao Wei, minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, proposed at this year's two sessions that new energy vehicles have entered the growth period
from the cultivation period in 2009.
Production and sales in 2015 exceeded 300,000 units, showing a rapid growth trend over the previous year
.

Miao Wei believes that the current development of new energy vehicles has encountered two bottlenecks, one is the product side, and it is necessary to focus on overcoming problems such as product performance, reliability, cruising range and life represented by power batteries; The second is the construction of charging facilities represented by the application side, which needs to be improved
.
Miao Wei said that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has made some arrangements for both aspects, and local governments have also taken active actions to ensure the further development
of new energy vehicles.

At present, the government's support for new energy vehicles is mainly concentrated in the back-end of market sales, and the front-end investment in R&D and design is relatively small, and this "imbalance" will cause a very large lag effect, which is also the main internal reason
why the current development of battery technology cannot keep up with the growth of market sales.
If the new battery technology is industrialized, it is expected to change the existing lithium battery industry pattern
.
、

According to preliminary estimates, the cruising range of a 500Kg (kg) aluminum-graphite battery can reach about 550 kilometers
.
Compared with traditional lithium battery technology, this battery has obvious advantages, not only reducing production costs by about 40%-50%, but also increasing energy density by at least 1.
3-2.
0 times
.