Apr
25
Osaka Metropolitan University researchers have developed a mass synthesis process for sodium-containing sulfides. Mass synthesis of electrolytes with high conductivity and formability is key to the practical use of all-solid-state sodium batteries, thought to be safer than lithium-ion batteries and less expensive, as sodium is far more plentiful than lithium.
The report discussing the discovery results have been published in the journal Energy Storage Materials and Inorganic Chemistry. The researchers developed a process that can lead to mass synthesis yields solid sulfide electrolyte with world’s highest reported sodium ion conductivity and glass electrolyte with high formability.
Synthesized material for all-solid-state sodium batteries. The synthesized solid sulfide electrolyte Na2.88Sb0.88W0.12S4 has the world’s highest reported sodium ion conductivity. Image Credit: Atsushi Sakuda, Osaka Metropolitan University. Click here for the largest image at the press release page.
The pursuit of greener energy also requires efficient rechargeable batteries to store that energy.
While lithium-ion batteries are currently the most widely used, all-solid-state sodium batteries are attracting attention as sodium is far more plentiful than lithium. That should make sodium batteries less expensive, and solid-state batteries are thought to be safer, but processing issues mean mass production has been difficult.
Osaka Metropolitan University Associate Professor Atsushi Sakuda and Professor Akitoshi Hayashi, both of the Graduate School of Engineering, led a research team in developing a process that can lead to mass synthesis for sodium-containing sulfides.
Using sodium polysulfides (sulfides with two or more atoms of sulfur) as both the material and the flux, which promotes fusion, the team created a solid sulfide electrolyte with the world’s highest reported sodium ion conductivity — about 10 times higher than required for practical use — and a glass electrolyte with high reduction resistance.
Mass synthesis of such electrolytes with high conductivity and formability is key to the practical use of all-solid-state sodium batteries.
Professor Sakuda commented. “This newly developed process is useful for the production of almost all sodium-containing sulfide materials, including solid electrolytes and electrode active materials. Also, compared to conventional methods, this process makes it easier to obtain materials that display higher performance, so we believe it will become a mainstream process for the future development of materials for all-solid-state sodium batteries.”
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If this development can get the sodium battery chemistry into mass production it will be a sea change in the costs for many of the popular electronics. That’s because the battery is a major cost component in many devices, especially the lower cost ones.
Lets hope this tech gets the sodium technology closer to the mass market.
Apr
24
New Material Found To Upgrade Your Electronic Devices
April 24, 2024 | Leave a Comment
Washington University in St. Louis scientists have developed a novel material that supercharges innovation in electrostatic energy storage. The material is built from artificial heterostructures made of freestanding 2D and 3D membranes that have an energy density up to 19 times higher than commercially available capacitors.
Electrostatic capacitors play a crucial role in modern electronics. They enable ultrafast charging and discharging, providing energy storage and power for devices ranging from smartphones, laptops and routers to medical devices, automotive electronics and industrial equipment. However, the ferroelectric materials used in capacitors have significant energy loss due to their material properties, making it difficult to provide high energy storage capability.
In a study published in Science, Sang-Hoon Bae, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, has addressed this long-standing challenge in deploying ferroelectric materials for energy storage applications.
Artificial heterostructures made of freestanding 2D and 3D membranes developed by Sang-Hoon Bae’s lab have an energy density up to 19 times higher than commercially available capacitors. Image Credit: Bae Lab at Washington University in St. Louis.
Bae and his collaborators, including Rohan Mishra, associate professor of mechanical engineering & materials science, and Chuan Wang, associate professor of electrical & systems engineering, both at WashU, and Frances Ross, the TDK Professor in Materials Science and Engineering at MIT, introduced an approach to control the relaxation time — an internal material property that describes how long it takes for charge to dissipate or decay – of ferroelectric capacitors using 2D materials.
Working with Bae, doctoral student Justin S. Kim and postdoctoral researcher Sangmoon Han developed novel 2D/3D/2D heterostructures that can minimize energy loss while preserving the advantageous material properties of ferroelectric 3D materials. Their approach cleverly sandwiches 2D and 3D materials in atomically thin layers with carefully engineered chemical and nonchemical bonds between each layer. A very thin 3D core is inserted between two outer 2D layers to create a stack only about 30 nanometers thick. That’s about one-tenth the size of an average virus particle.
“We created a new structure based on the innovations we’ve already made in my lab involving 2D materials,” Bae said. “Initially, we weren’t focused on energy storage, but during our exploration of material properties, we found a new physical phenomenon that we realized could be applied to energy storage, and that was both very interesting and potentially much more useful.”
The 2D/3D/2D heterostructures are finely crafted to sit in the sweet spot between conductivity and nonconductivity where semiconducting materials have optimal electric properties for energy storage. With this design, Bae and his collaborators reported an energy density up to 19 times higher than commercially available ferroelectric capacitors, and they achieved an efficiency over 90%, which is also unprecedented.
Bae explained, “We found that dielectric relaxation time can be modulated or induced by a very small gap in the material structure. That new physical phenomenon is something we hadn’t seen before. It enables us to manipulate dielectric material in such a way that it doesn’t polarize and lose charge capability.”
As the world grapples with the imperative of transitioning toward next-generation electronics components, Bae’s novel heterostructure material paves the way for high-performance electronic devices, encompassing high-power electronics, high-frequency wireless communication systems, and integrated circuit chips. These advancements are particularly crucial in sectors requiring robust power management solutions, such as electric vehicles and infrastructure development.
“Fundamentally, this structure we’ve developed is a novel electronic material,” Bae said. “We’re not yet 100% optimal, but already we’re outperforming what other labs are doing. Our next steps will be to make this material structure even better, so we can meet the need for ultrafast charging and discharging and very high energy densities in capacitors. We must be able to do that without losing storage capacity over repeated charges to see this material used broadly in large electronics, like electric vehicles, and other developing green technologies.”
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This technology looks really good and Bae instills a lot of confidence with his forward-looking comments. 100% optimal is a great way to drive to a major technology improvement. The idea that the electronics in one’s devices are using 100% optimal electronics is a very reassuring thing. So far we seldom know what kills our devices, but capacitors, resistors and diodes while pretty good, they are far from fail-safe and essentially no consumer items have backup systems engineered in. Yup, those 10 cent parts can wreck a multi hundred-dollar item.
So, Go Professor Bae!! May that 100% optimal you noted become a new standard for lots of products and the parts used to make them.
Apr
23
University of Michigan engineers have designed new chemical reactor to make an important ingredient for plastics, adhesives, carpet fibers, household cleaners and more from natural gas. The idea could reduce manufacturing costs in a post-petroleum economy by millions of dollars.
The research paper has been published in the journal Science.
The reactor creates propylene, a workhorse chemical that is also used to make a long list of industrial chemicals, including ingredients for nitrile rubber found in automotive hoses and seals as well as blue protective gloves.
The innermost tube of the reactor splits propane into hydrogen gas and propylene and allows the hydrogen gas to escape into the outermost shell of the reactor. That hydrogen gas can be burned to further drive the reactions. Image credit: James Wortman, Linic Lab, University of Michigan. For the largest image click the press release image here.
Most propylene used today comes from oil refineries, which collect it as a byproduct of refining crude oil into gasoline. As oil and gasoline fall out of vogue in favor of natural gas, solar, and wind energy, production of propylene and other oil-derived products could fall below the current demand without new ways to make them.
Natural gas extracted from shale holds one potential alternative to propylene sourced from crude oil. It’s rich in propane, which resembles propylene closely enough to be a promising precursor material, but current methods to make propylene from natural gas are still too inefficient to bridge the gap in supply and demand.
Suljo Linic, the Martin Lewis Perl Collegiate Professor of Chemical Engineering and the corresponding author of the study published in Science explained, “It’s very hard to economically convert propane into propylene. You need to heat that reaction to drive it, and standard methods require very high temperatures to produce enough propylene. At those temperatures, you don’t just get propylene but solid carbon deposits and other undesirable products that impair the catalyst. To regenerate the reactor, we need to burn off the solid carbon deposits often, which makes the process inefficient.”
The researchers’ new reactor system efficiently makes propylene from shale gas by separating propane into propylene and hydrogen gas. It also gives hydrogen a way out, changing the balance between the concentration of propane and reaction products in a way that allows more propylene to be made. Once separated, the hydrogen can also be safely burned away from the propane, heating the reactor enough to speed up the reactions without making any undesirable compounds.
This separation is achieved through the reactor’s nested, hollow-fiber membrane tubing. The innermost tube is made up of materials that splits the propane into propylene and hydrogen gas. While the tubing keeps most of the propylene inside the innermost chamber, the hydrogen gas can escape into an outer chamber through pores in a membrane layer of the material.
Inside that chamber, the hydrogen gas is controllably burned by mixing in precise amounts of oxygen.
Because the hydrogen can be burned inside the reactor and can operate under higher propane pressures, the technology could allow plants to produce propylene from natural gas without installing extra heaters.
A plant that produces 500,000 metric tons of propylene annually could save as much as $23.5 million over other methods starting with shale gas, according to the researchers’ estimates. Those savings come on top of the operational savings from burning hydrogen produced in reaction, rather than other fuels.
The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences, the RAPID Manufacturing Institute and the National Science Foundation. The reactor materials were studied at the Michigan Center for Materials Characterization. The team is pursuing patent protection with the assistance of U-M Innovation Partnerships and is seeking partners to bring the technology to market. Suljo Linic is also a professor of integrative systems and design.
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While propylene isn’t on every consumer’s mind as they shop it is on nearly every product designer’s mind/ of not in the product itself there is a provability the packaging might involvesome propylene. Its a common material in the modern world.
So any means to produce it at a cleaner and lower cost is going to be welcome.
Apr
18
Lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries hold promise for bringing more energy dense and low-cost batteries closer to market. University of California – San Diego engineers have developed an advanced cathode material for lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries that is healable and highly conductive, overcoming longstanding challenges of traditional sulfur cathodes. These improvements overcome the limitations of lithium-sulfur batteries’ current cathodes.
The reporting work paper has been published in the journal Nature.
Solid-state lithium-sulfur batteries are a type of rechargeable battery consisting of a solid electrolyte, an anode made of lithium metal and a cathode made of sulfur. These batteries hold promise as a superior alternative to current lithium-ion batteries as they offer increased energy density and lower costs. They have the potential to store up to twice as much energy per kilogram as conventional lithium-ion batteries – in other words, they could double the range of electric vehicles without increasing the battery pack’s weight. Additionally, the use of abundant, easily sourced materials makes them an economically viable and environmentally friendlier choice.
Jianbin Zhou prepares a test battery. Image Credit: University of California – San Diego. Click here for the largest view and more images at the press release webpage.
But the development of lithium-sulfur solid-state batteries has been historically plagued by the inherent characteristics of sulfur cathodes. Not only is sulfur a poor electron conductor, but sulfur cathodes also experience significant expansion and contraction during charging and discharging, leading to structural damage and decreased contact with the solid electrolyte. These issues collectively diminish the cathode’s ability to transfer charge, compromising the overall performance and longevity of the solid-state battery.
To overcome these challenges, a team led by researchers at the UC San Diego Sustainable Power and Energy Center developed a new cathode material: a crystal composed of sulfur and iodine. By inserting iodine molecules into the crystalline sulfur structure, the researchers drastically increased the cathode material’s electrical conductivity by 11 orders of magnitude, making it 100 billion times more conductive than crystals made of sulfur alone.
Study co-senior author Ping Liu, a professor of nanoengineering and director of the Sustainable Power and Energy Center at UC San Diego remarked, “We are very excited about the discovery of this new material. The drastic increase in electrical conductivity in sulfur is a surprise and scientifically very interesting.”
Moreover, the new crystal material possesses a low melting point of 65º Celsius (149º Fahrenheit), which is lower than the temperature of a hot mug of coffee. This means that the cathode can be easily re-melted after the battery is charged to repair the damaged interfaces from cycling. This is an important feature to address the cumulative damage that occurs at the solid-solid interface between the cathode and electrolyte during repeated charging and discharging.
Study co-senior author Shyue Ping Ong, a professor of nanoengineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering commented, “This sulfur-iodide cathode presents a unique concept for managing some of the main impediments to commercialization of Li-S batteries. Iodine disrupts the intermolecular bonds holding sulfur molecules together by just the right amount to lower its melting point to the Goldilocks zone — above room temperature yet low enough for the cathode to be periodically re-healed via melting.”
Study co-first author Jianbin Zhou, a former nanoengineering postdoctoral researcher from Liu’s research group added, “The low melting point of our new cathode material makes repairing the interfaces possible, a long sought-after solution for these batteries,” said study co-first author Jianbin Zhou, a former nanoengineering postdoctoral researcher from Liu’s research group. “This new material is an enabling solution for future high energy density solid-state batteries.”
To validate the effectiveness of the new cathode material, the researchers constructed a test battery and subjected it to repeated charge and discharge cycles. The battery remained stable for over 400 cycles while retaining 87 percent of its capacity.
“This discovery has the potential to solve one of the biggest challenges to the introduction of solid-state lithium-sulfur batteries by dramatically increasing the useful life of a battery,” said study co-author Christopher Brooks, chief scientist at Honda Research Institute USA, Inc. “The ability for a battery to self-heal simply by raising the temperature could significantly extend the total battery life cycle, creating a potential pathway toward real-world application of solid-state batteries.”
The team is working to further advance the solid-state lithium-sulfur battery technology by improving cell engineering designs and scaling up the cell format.
“While much remains to be done to deliver a viable solid state battery, our work is a significant step,” said Liu. “This work was made possible thanks to great collaborations between our teams at UC San Diego and our research partners at national labs, academia and industry.”
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Well, twice the capacity for a year and a month for a way lower price might make a go of it. The question is how many remelts can the system stand? 2 won’t get very far but 10 or 20 would be a revolution.
There will need to be a standard setting for remelting purposes. Some coding systems as one can’t foresee an endless remelt, and to make an exchange system practical.
As noted, there is a long development process ahead. And the question in many folks mind is how well will they work on a cold windy morning in Chicago during January?
Perhaps the biggest news is the effect of iodine on sulfur. That is stunning news, indeed!
Apr
17
“This is kind of a new idea,” said Qiming Hu, a staff research physicist at PPPL and lead author of a new paper published in Nuclear Fusion about the work, which has also been demonstrated experimentally. “The full capabilities are still being figured out, but our paper does a great job of advancing our understanding of the potential benefits.”
While the two methods – known as electron cyclotron current drive (ECCD) and applying resonant magnetic perturbations (RMP) – have long been studied, this is the first time researchers have simulated how they can be used together to give fusion enhanced plasma control.
Ultimately, scientists hope to use fusion to generate electricity. First, they will need to overcome several hurdles, including perfecting methods for minimizing bursts of particles from the plasma that are known as edge-localized modes (ELMs).
The image on the left shows the tokamak and 3D magnetic perturbation generated by 3D coils, with the purple-blue hues representing lower amplitude perturbations and the red representing higher amplitude perturbations. The image on the right is a closer view showing the top half of the tokamak and plasma. The coils are used to generate the magnetic field perturbations that produce the islands (blue). Another coil can also be found on the bottom of the machine. The injection system for the ECCD microwaves is depicted on top (red). These can be used to adjust the width of the islands. Image credit: Qiming Hu / PPPL. For the largest view click here for the press release link.
“Periodically, these bursts release a little bit of pressure because it’s too much. But these bursts can be dangerous,” said Hu, who works for PPPL at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility, a DOE user facility hosted by General Atomics. DIII-D is a tokamak, a device that uses magnetic fields to confine a fusion plasma in a donut shape. ELMs can end a fusion reaction and even damage the tokamak, so researchers have developed many ways to try to avoid them.
PPPL Principal Research Physicist Alessandro Bortolon, who was one of the co-authors of the paper added, “The best way we’ve found to avoid them is by applying resonant magnetic perturbations, or RMPs, that generate additional magnetic fields.”
Magnetic fields generate islands, microwaves adjust them
The magnetic fields initially applied by the tokamak wind around the torus-shaped plasma, both the long way – around the outer edge, and the short way – from the outer edge and through the center hole. The additional magnetic fields created by the RMPs travel through the plasma, weaving in and out like a sewer’s stitch. These fields produce oval or circular magnetic fields in the plasma called magnetic islands.
“Normally, islands in plasmas are really, really bad. If the islands are too big, then the plasma itself can disrupt,” explained Bortolon.
However, the researchers already knew experimentally that under certain conditions, the islands can be beneficial. The hard part is generating RMPs big enough to generate the islands. That’s where the ECCD, which is basically a microwave beam injection, comes in. The researchers found that adding ECCD to the plasma’s edge lowers the amount of current required to generate the RMPs necessary to make the islands.
The microwave beam injection also allowed the researchers to perfect the size of the islands for maximum plasma edge stability. Metaphorically, the RMPs act like a simple light switch that turns the islands on, while the ECCD acts like an additional dimmer switch that lets the researchers adjust the islands to the ideal size for a manageable plasma.
“Our simulation refines our understanding of the interactions in play,” Hu said. “When the ECCD was added in the same direction as the current in the plasma, the width of the island decreased, and the pedestal pressure increased. Applying the ECCD in the opposite direction produced opposite results, with island width increasing and pedestal pressure dropping or facilitating island opening.”
ECCD at the edge, instead of the core
The research is also notable because ECCD was added to the plasma’s edge instead of the core, where it is typically used.
“Usually, people think applying localized ECCD at the plasma edge is risky because the microwaves may damage in-vessel components,” said Hu. “We’ve shown that it’s doable, and we’ve demonstrated the flexibility of the approach. This might open new avenues for designing future devices.”
By lowering the amount of current required to generate the RMPs, this simulation work could ultimately lead to lowering the cost of fusion energy production in commercial-scale fusion devices of the future.
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This is another example of technical research that could very well apply to most all fusion efforts, not just tokamaks. Plasma isn’t the kind of thing one pours into a glass, it simply defies the usually handling concepts in science.
So, this is truly new ground. Which makes this news very interesting as the role plasma will play in the future is still being thought out. Fusion might only be part of it. What can one do with supremely hot extremely energized hot stuff?
It will be very interesting to see what thinking imagineering minds come up with.
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