Batteries

Leveraging salt could help us avoid much of the cost and difficulty in sourcing scarcer lithium, and Chinese giant CATL is looking to lead the charge by launching its first commercial sodium-ion battery.

A team led by the Nobel-Prize-winning inventor of rechargeable lithium batteries has come up with a way to boost their capacity, developing a novel coating that protects against significant losses at the outset.

Boston's Form Energy says its iron-air batteries store up to 100 hours' worth of energy at a tenth the cost of a lithium battery farm. They could make a huge contribution to long-term storage as the world makes its transition toward renewable energy.

A research group in the US has taken a significant step forward with a design for a long-lasting lithium metal battery with high capacity, which remained functional for a record-breaking number of charging cycles.

While electric vehicles are greener than their fuel-burning counterparts, their battery packs still aren't as recyclable as they could be. A new process could help, by more efficiently extracting reusable materials from old lithium-ion batteries.

By better understanding the intricacies of how lithium batteries operate, scientists can more easily identify opportunities to improve their performance, and scientists at the University of Cambridge have developed a powerful new tool for the job.

Batteries that use organic materials in place of rare metals are seen as a promising way to tackle their environmental footprint, and new research demonstrates how their performance might be brought up to speed.

Scientists have put forward a solution to a major problem plaguing lithium metal batteries, demonstrating how a finely tuned carbon membrane can prevent these types of battery form failure and enable them to be safely charged over hundreds of cycles.

Scientists have demonstrated a new type of lithium-battery they say is built specifically for eVTOL flight, leveraging an innovative high-temperature charging technology to give it enough juice for meaningful aerial trips in just five to 10 minutes.

As technology continues to evolve, we're going to see an increasing number of battery-powered connected devices – some of which will be single-use, like shipping packaging. A new biodegradable mini-capacitor has been created with such uses in mind.

Scientists have made a breakthrough that overcomes a technical issue that has held back highly promising lithium-metal battery architecture, which could pave the way for batteries with as much as 10 times the capacity of today's devices.

Scientists in Sweden have applied some creative thinking to energy storage and building materials, demonstrating a novel type of cement-based battery that could see large structures constructed from functional concrete.