Disorder can stabilize batteriesNovel materials can considerably improve storage capacity and cyclin

Disorder can stabilize batteriesNovel materials can considerably improve storage capacity and cycling stability of rechargeable batteries. Among these materials are high-entropy oxides (HEO), whose stability results from a disordered distribution of the elements. With HEO, electrochemical properties can be tailored, as was found by scientists of the team of nanotechnology expert Horst Hahn at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). The researchers report their findings in the journal Nature Communications.Sustainable energy supply requires reliable storage systems. Demand for rechargeable electrochemical energy storage devices for both stationary and mobile applications has increased rapidly in the past years and is expected to continue to grow in the future. Among the most important properties of batteries are their storage capacity and their cycling stability, i.e. the number of possible charging and discharging processes without any loss of capacity. Thanks to its high stability, an entirely new class of materials called high-entropy oxides (HEO) is expected to result in major improvements. Moreover, electrochemical properties of HEO can be customized by varying their compositions. For the first time, scientists of KIT’s Institute of Nanotechnology (INT) and Karlsruhe Nano Micro Facility (KNMF), of the Helmholtz Institute Ulm (HIU) established jointly by KIT and Ulm University, and of the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras have now demonstrated the suitability of HEO as conversion materials for reversible lithium storage. Conversion batteries based on electrochemical material conversion allow for an increase of the stored amount of energy, while battery weight is reduced. The scientists used HEO to produce conversion-based electrodes that survived more than 500 charging cycles without any significant degradation of capacity.Read more. -- source link

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