A lithium-ion battery made with a bumpy carbon-based anode material maintained its rechargeable storage capacity in extreme cold.
When temperatures fall below freezing, cellphones need to be recharged frequently, and electric cars have shorter driving ranges. This is because their lithium-ion batteries’ anodes get sluggish, holding less charge and draining energy quickly. To improve electrical performance in the extreme cold, researchers reporting inhave replaced the traditional graphite anode in a lithium-ion battery with a bumpy carbon-based material, which maintains its rechargeable storage capacity down to -31°F.
Lithium-ion batteries are great for powering rechargeable electronics because they can store a lot of energy and have long lifespans. But when temps fall below freezing, these energy sources’ electrical performance declines, and when conditions are cold enough, they can fail to transfer any charge. It’s why some people living in the U.S. Midwest have trouble with their electric cars in the dead of winter, and why it’s risky to use these batteries in space explorations.
To create the new material, the researchers heated a cobalt-containing zeolite imidazolate framework at high temperatures. The resulting 12-sided carbon nanospheres had bumpy surfaces that demonstrated excellent electrical charge transfer capabilities. Then the team tested the material’s electrical performance as the anode, with lithium metal as the cathode, inside a coin-shaped battery.
The authors acknowledge funding from the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities , the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, the Science and Technology Project of Guangdong Province, the Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Guangdong Laboratory and Beijing Jiaotong University.The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress.