Recently, a Harvard University research team has developed a new solid-state battery

Recently, a Harvard University research team has developed a new solid-state battery that can be cycled 10,000 times, is expected to be fully charged within 3 minutes, and can last for 20 years.The solid-state battery uses lithium in pure metal form, using solid electrodes and a solid electrolyte, rather than the liquid or polymer gel electrolytes found in lithium-ion batteries. In the lab, the battery prototype was able to successfully complete 5,000 to 10,000 charge cycles. The Harvard research team’s research on solid-state lithium metal batteries can be traced back to May last year, but the technology at that time remained at the level of “full charging within 10 to 20 minutes and battery life of 10 to 15 years”.

The design of this battery is inspired by the classic British sandwich. If you imagine the battery as a sandwich, first a layer of bread (lithium metal anode), then lettuce (graphite coating), then a layer of tomatoes (first electrolyte) and a layer of bacon (second electrolyte), At the end is another layer of tomatoes and the last piece of bread (cathode).

The research team believes that typically lithium metal anodes in other solid-state designs develop dendritic growths that can gradually penetrate through the electrolyte to the cathode, thereby shorting out the lithium-ion battery. That is to say, the dendrites or dendrites produced during the use of lithium-ion batteries are the root cause of battery fires. While the sandwich’s multilayer structure prevents dendrites from forming, in this design, dendrites grow in the “lettuce” and “tomato” but stop at the “bacon”. The “bacon” barrier prevents dendrites from passing through and shorting out the cell, preventing failure.

Ouyang Minggao, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and vice-chairman of the China Electric Vehicle Association of 100, said earlier that materials such as materials must be accumulated and developed, and the time when solid-state batteries will be put into large-scale commercial applications is probably between 2025 and 2030.