Cleaning up hybrid battery electrodes improves capacity and lifespan

     The latest method of creating supercapacitor battery electrodes that causes no interference from passive components.The researchers from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) introduced a new method of creating electrodes in charging hybrid batteries that results an outstanding electrical capacity and long-term stability. The ion soft-landing is a method of electrodes storing an additional energy and the lifespan is doubled than the conventional one. This method is very simple, thus produces a high performance, cost effective, and lifelong rechargeable batteries.

     A remarkable benefit of ion soft-landing is the capacity of making electrode surface in a specific manner that uses only the best molecules from an intricate composition of raw components. The researchers focused to apply this way of building electrodes on a hybrid battery with a fast-charging supercapacitor. It is beneficial to hybrid electric vehicles that is way more convenient than using lithium ion batteries.

     Julia Laskin, Chemist and Laboratory fellow of the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, stated, “This is the first time anyone has been able to put together a functioning battery using ion soft-landing.” Lead author and chemist of PNNL, Venkateshkumar Prabhakaran, added, “It will help us unravel important scientific questions about this energy storage technology, a hybrid between common lithium rechargeable batteries and supercapacitors that have very high energy density.”

      Laskin and the team used supercapacitor electrodes composed of very tiny carbon tubes and sprayed a chemical called polyoxometalate or POM that contains both positive and negative ions to build hybrid electrodes. Ion soft-landing used only the negative ions contained in POM and remained in the electrode surface. A square-centimeter sized hybrid battery combined with an ionic liquid membrane that served as an electrolyte was created by the team. The electrolyte was solid gel in form.

     The team tested the energy storage capacity and charging and discharging cycles that a hybrid battery with soft-landing can handle before it gradually fades. They also made a comparison of this battery with a conventional hybrid battery using an electrospray deposition technique. The result of ion soft-landing compared to the conventional electrospray deposition was remarkable. Ion soft-landing could hold a third more energy and stored 27% more energy than the conventional one. At lowest amount of POM, it yielded a much higher capacity compared to the conventional, sodium-based POM electrodes that needs to double the amount of POM material to attain its highest capacity. The team also realized that using soft-landing technique, hybrid batteries would double its lifespan.