The sodium-ion battery formula has some advantages over conventional lithium-ion batteries, including the use of non-flammable, abundant materials and the potential for cutting costs.
One of the areas for improvement is the anode materials. The graphite used in lithium-ion batteries is not a candidate because it can’t store sodium. The consensus alternative has been hard carbon, a form of carbon that doesn’t devolve into graphite under high heat. However, hard carbon can inhibit capacity during the anode formation stage, when the battery is being manufactured
A team of researchers at BAM (the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing) in Germany, noted that the loss of capacity during the manufacturing process is the result of a chemical reaction between the electrolyte and the anode. The BAM solution involves a customized form of activated carbon, applied over a core of sponge-like hard carbon in a thin layer. “Activated carbon is commonly used as a filter, and that’s what it does here, allowing sodium ions to reach the hard carbon core while keeping the electrolyte out,” reports Clean Technica.
Source: Clean Technica Read The Article
PSR Analysis: Sodium-ion batteries have been lingering around the fringes of the vehicle electrification movement for years. A breakthrough moment may have finally arrived as the hurdles to commercial application have fallen. If indeed this activated-carbon trick holds up in large-scale production, it might become the biggest news in battery tech in recent years. PSR
Guy Youngs is Forecast & Adoption Lead at Power Systems Research
