Energy storage startup SPARKZ licenses ORNL cobalt-free battery tech

Energy storage startup SPARKZ Inc. has exclusively licensed five battery technologies from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory designed to eliminate cobalt metal in lithium-ion batteries. The advancement is aimed at accelerating the production of electric vehicles and energy storage solutions for the power grid.

Cathode ‘Defects’ Improve Battery Performance

Chemists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have made a new finding about battery performance that points to a different strategy for optimizing cathode materials. Their research, published in Chemistry of Materials and featured in ACS Editors’ Choice, focuses on controlling the amount of structural defects in the cathode material.

MTU engineers examine lithium battery defects

Lithium dendrites cause poor performance and even explosions in batteries with flammable liquid electrolytes. How these dendrites grow, even with a solid electrolytes, is still a mystery, but materials engineers at MTU and Oak Ridge study the conditions that enable dendrites and how to stop them.

Argonne’s debt to 2019 Nobel Prize for lithium-ion battery

A roar of approval rang out at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Argonne National Laboratory upon the announcement in October that John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino had won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. On December 10th in Stockholm, they received this highly coveted prize for their major contributions to the invention of the lithium-ion battery, which is a long-standing major focus of research at Argonne.

Battery collaboration meeting discusses new pathways to recycle lithium-ion batteries

At a conference held by the ReCell Center, an advanced battery recycling collaboration based at Argonne, representatives from industry, government, and academia discussed innovative approaches for lithium-ion battery recycling.

Building a better battery with machine learning

In two new papers, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have turned to the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence to dramatically accelerate battery discovery.

Go With the Flow: Scientists Design New Grid Batteries for Renewable Energy

Scientists at Berkeley Lab have designed an affordable ‘flow battery’ membrane that could accelerate renewable energy for the electrical grid.

Charging Up the Development of Lithium-Ion Batteries

On October 9, the Nobel committee recognized work in developing lithium-ion batteries. These batteries have enabled a huge number of advances, including mobile phones and plug-in electric vehicles. The DOE Office of Science is proud to have supported research by Drs. Whittingham and Goodenough and to have funded research by many scientists who have built upon their innovations.

Using High Energy Density Material in Electrode Design Enhances Lithium Sulfur Batteries

To develop higher capacity batteries, researchers have looked to lithium sulfur batteries because of sulfur’s high theoretical capacity and energy density. But there are still several problems to solve before they can be put into practical applications. The biggest is the shuttling effect that occurs during cycling. To solve this problem and improve lithium sulfur battery performance, the researchers created a sandwich-structured electrode using a novel material that traps polysulfides and increases the reaction kinetics.