Lithium-Air Battery Stores 4x As Much Energy Per Pound As Lithium Ion Batteries

You sure have heard about the Li-Ion batteries (your smartphone might just have one) but have you heard about the Lithium-Air battery? The Li-Air battery stores 4x as much energy per pound as the traditional Li-Ion battery, but the technology hasn't seen rapid development in the recent months. The nature of the electro-chemical reactions that take place in these batteries is not yet clearly understood. However, MIT researchers Robert Mitchell & Betar Gallant have used a transmission electron microscope (TEM) imaging technique to observe the molecular level reactions that happen when the batteries are charged.

slide
Image Credit: JIN SUNTIVICH​

The work has been described in Nano Letters paper published by Robert Mitchell. The observations have shown for the first time the the oxidation of Lithium Peroxide, which gets formed during the discharge of the Li-Air battery. What's more interesting is that the rate of oxidation in the experiments conducted by the researchers was 100x faster than the current generation of Li-Air batteries, available mostly in laboratories.

There's no word on whether the technology will ever find commercial applications. Those of you who're interested in knowing more about the research, head over to the source link below.

Source: #-Link-Snipped-#

Replies

You are reading an archived discussion.

Related Posts

Okay, I have re-written THIS BOOK in LibreOffice & exported to PDF File. But again I am not satisfied with the quality of how this book looks.So, I am not...
It's been said that Linux Kernel 3.10 has received massive changes in the last several years.This changes is rated according to commit counts & potential actual lines. Here are some...
Hi. I am new to CrazyEngineers.
As Google Glass takes center stage, all eyes are set on the technological marvel, quite aptly. But nascent as it is, the Glass comes with its share of woes. Google...
Tata X0 is the new small car under development at Tata Motors' Ranjangaon plant near Pune. The sources closer to the development have confirmed that the new compact car will...