Electrode could lead to large-capacity rechargeable battery

They are reported to have created an electrode that employs crystalline nanoparticles of a copper compound in order to achieve this.

In laboratory tests, the electrode is reported to have survived 40,000 cycles of charging and discharging, after which it could still be charged to more than 80 per cent of its original charge capacity. The average lithium-ion battery can only handle about 400 charge/discharge cycles before it deteriorates too much to be of practical use.

‘At a rate of several cycles per day, this electrode would have a good 30 years of useful life on the electrical grid,’ said Colin Wessells, a graduate student in materials science and engineering who is the lead author of a paper describing the research, published this week in Nature Communications.

The electrode’s durability is reportedly derived from the atomic structure of the crystalline copper used to make it. The crystals have an open framework that allows ions — electrically charged particles whose movements en masse either charge or discharge a battery — to easily go in and out without damaging the electrode.