Work by a Waterloo Engineering researcher that could make batteries safer, better and longer lasting was recently published in a leading academic journal.
Dr. Teng Cui, a professor of mechanical and mechatronics engineering, was lead author of a paper in Nature on research he conducted while he was a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California.
Cui joined the University of Waterloo last summer and is continuing his work on batteries, among several other areas of interest, as director of the Extreme Mechanics and Energy Materials Lab.
His research at Stanford involved a longstanding challenge with lithium-ion batteries – widely used in transportation, energy storage and electronic devices – with solid ceramic, rather than liquid, electrolytes.
Solid-state batteries, as they are known, promise higher energy density and better safety, but are prone to the formation of tiny internal cracks during charging that result in short-circuits that drain their charge and render them useless.
Cui and the Stanford research team set out to solve that problem by mechanically compressing the solid electrolyte during charging. That prevented the formation of vertical cracks, the kind that cause short-circuiting by reaching a battery’s electrodes.
Findings in the paper could inform the future design of long-lasting solid-state batteries, which have the potential to double the energy density of current lithium-ion batteries.
“We want to make reliable, energy-dense batteries that are fast charging,” Cui said in a media release issued by Stanford and SLAC. “This research shows us several of the steps that need to happen to make that possible.”