Using salt as a key ingredient, Chinese and British researchers have designed a new type of rechargeable battery that could accelerate the shift to greener, electric transport on our roads. Many electric vehicles (EV) are powered by rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, but they can lose energy and power over time.
In recent years, the explosive development of NEVs has led to increasing demand for NEV batteries, which has led to the rapid development of the NEV battery industry, resulting in increasing prices of raw materials manufactured and sold by raw material manufacturers, i.e., the upstream battery industry.
As one of the core technologies of NEVs, power battery accounts for over 30% of the cost of NEVs, directly determines the development level and direction of NEVs. In 2020, the installed capacity of NEV batteries in China reached 63.3 GWh, and the market size reached 61.184 billion RMB, gaining support from many governments.
The development of the battery industry is crucial to the development of the whole NEV industry, and many countries have listed battery technologies as key targets for support at a national strategic level, which means that the NEV battery industry as a new industry has stepped on the stage of the development of this era. .
Batteries are effectively chemical sandwiches, which work by shuttling charged ions from one side (the anode) to the other (the cathode) through some intermediate material (the electrolyte) while electrons flow in an outside circuit. Recharging the battery means shunting the ions back to the anode (see ‘How a battery works’).
How does it work? The battery uses carbon-14, a radioactive isotope of carbon, which has a half-life of 5,700 years meaning the battery will still retain half of its power even after thousands of years. The prototype batteries are 10mm x 10mm with a thickness of up to 0.5mm.