2023-12-25 12:00:02
Do you dream of the day when a stop at the charging station will be as brief as a stop at the gas station?
In an article published in the journal Joule, a research team from McGill University and the University of Quebec at Montréal (UQAM) announces the development of an innovative method allowing real-time observation of the physical processes taking place in games liquid and solid of the cells constituting the ion battery of lithiumcommonly called “Li-ion battery”.
By allowing us to better understand the factors affecting the speed of charge and discharge of Li-ion batteries, this discovery could make it possible to accelerate the recharging of electronic devices and vehicles of everyday use, not to say essential: laptopcell phone as well as bicycle, scooter and electric cars.
Led by Janine Mauzeroll and Steen B. Schougaard, both professors of chemistry at McGill University and UQAM, respectively, the team of research worked in collaboration with a facility of synchrotron radiationto European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF). Using very intense X-rays, the team was able to observe, in real time, the changes in lithium concentration that occur in the cells of a Li-ion battery during charging or discharging.
“During charging or discharging the battery, lithium moves through the cell, both in a liquid electrolyte and in a solid active material, and the speed of its travel is generally a function of the speed at which it can pass from side of the cell to the other going through these two phases,” explains Jeremy Dawkins, who worked on this project as PhD student in the laboratories of Professors Schougaard and Mauzeroll. “We are the first to describe a method which makes it possible to follow the shift lithium in the liquid and solid phases of a Li-ion battery during operation and, at the same time, to quantify the performance of a cell at the molecular level.”
This advance could have repercussions on ultra-specialized research in the field of batteries, of course, but also in the daily lives of ordinary people, i.e. users of electronic devices and electric vehicles. “The benefit of this work is that it provides research teams with an innovative tool to study the performance of Li-ion batteries, which opens up many perspectives that were not previously possible,” continues Jeremy Dawkins. We hope that they will advance battery research more quickly, for example by improving the architecture of the electrodes much more quickly. The performance of the batteries we use on a daily basis could be improved as a result.”
The research team is delighted to have been able to successfully complete their study despite COVID-19. Indeed, the researchers from McGill University and UQAM were in Montreal, but the ESRF – the establishment where the calculations were made – is located in Grenoble, France. However, in 2020, when public administrations restricted travel due to the pandemic, the fate of the study suddenly became uncertain. “The Faculty of Science at McGill and that of UQAM granted exemptions which allowed members of the team to travel so that the evaluations could be carried out,” remembers Professor Mauzeroll. “Our collaborators at the ESRF in France did their utmost to evaluate our samples in the heart of the pandemic,” adds Jeremy Dawkins. With willpower and a good dose of luck, we managed to make the evaluations we needed. planes need in the short time available to us.”
The study Mapping the total lithium inventory of Li-ion batteries by Jeremy Dawkins, Janine Mauzeroll, et al, was published in Joule.
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