Nature Communications, 2023; 14 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-39685-x Georgia Institute of Technology. "Aluminum materials show promising performance for safer, cheaper, more powerful batteries." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 19 July 2023. < / releases / 2023 / 07 / 230719150013.htm>.
The idea of making batteries with aluminum isn't new. Researchers investigated its potential in the 1970s, but it didn't work well. When used in a conventional lithium-ion battery, aluminum fractures and fails within a few charge-discharge cycles, due to expansion and contraction as lithium travels in and out of the material.
The research team knew that aluminum would have energy, cost, and manufacturing benefits when used as a material in the battery’s anode — the negatively charged side of the battery that stores lithium to create energy — but pure aluminum foils were failing rapidly when tested in batteries. The team decided to take a different approach.
The specific energy of these batteries can be as high as 400 Wh/kg, which enables their use as reserve energy sources in remote areas. Aluminum-air batteries with high energy and power densities were described in the early 1960s. However, practical commercialization never began because this system presents some critical technological limitations.
When used in a conventional lithium-ion battery, aluminum fractures and fails within a few charge-discharge cycles, due to expansion and contraction as lithium travels in and out of the material. Developers concluded that aluminum wasn’t a viable battery material, and the idea was largely abandoned.
The team observed that the aluminum anode could store more lithium than conventional anode materials, and therefore more energy. In the end, they had created high-energy density batteries that could potentially outperform lithium-ion batteries. Postdoctoral researcher Dr. Congcheng Wang builds a battery cell.