According to foreign media reports, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Mellon Institute of Technology have developed a semi-liquid lithium metal anode that can provide a new paradigm for battery design. Lithium batteries made with this new electrode will have higher capacities and are safer than traditional lithium metal batteries that use aluminum foil as anodes.

　　Lithium batteries have the ability to store large amounts of energy, making them one of the most common rechargeable battery types used in modern electronics. Generally, this type of battery consists of a flammable liquid electrolyte and two electrodes (anode and cathode) separated by a membrane. After repeated charging and discharging of the battery, lithium dendrites will grow on the electrode surface. These dendrites can puncture the film separating the two electrodes, allowing the cathode to come into contact with the anode. The result may cause the battery to short-circuit or, at worst, may Fire.

　　Krzysztof Matyjaszewski, professor of natural sciences in the Department of Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University, said: "Theoretically, using lithium metal anodes in lithium batteries has a much larger capacity than batteries using graphite anodes, but the most important thing is to ensure that the battery It's safe."

　　Currently, volatile liquid electrolytes are used in batteries. One solution is to replace them with solid ceramic electrolytes, which are highly conductive, non-flammable and sufficiently resistant to dendrites. However, the researchers found that the contact between the ceramic electrolyte and the solid lithium anode was insufficient to store and supply the amount of electricity needed by most electronics. Sipei Li, a doctoral student in the Department of Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University, and Han Wang, a doctoral student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, created a new material, a semifluid metal anode, that overcomes this shortcoming.

　　Li and Wang collaborated with Matyjaszewski and Jay Whitacre to create a dual-conducting polymer/carbon-based composite on which lithium particles are evenly distributed. The carbon-based composite is able to remain fluid at room temperature, allowing sufficient contact with the solid electrolyte. Combining a semi-liquid metal anode with a garnet solid ceramic electrolyte enables such batteries to have up to 10 times higher energy density than batteries made using a solid electrolyte and a traditional lithium foil anode. The battery life cycle is also longer.

　　The researchers believe their method could have far-reaching implications, for example by being used to produce high-capacity batteries for electric vehicles and specialized batteries for wearable devices that require flexible batteries. Moreover, the researchers also believe that their method could be used in other rechargeable battery systems, such as nanometal batteries and potassium metal batteries, as well as in grid energy storage systems.

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