Seaweed-based material brings battery breakthrough

Aiming to pave the way for greener and more efficient energy storage, the project builds on previous work at Bristol and is a collaboration with Imperial College and University College London. 

Sodium-metal batteries (SMBs) are a promising high-energy and low-cost energy storage system for the next-generation of large-scale applications, researchers said. However, a major impediment to their development is uncontrolled dendrite growth, which penetrate the battery’s separator and result in short circuiting.

Now, according to the team, its separator made from cellulose nanomaterials derived from brown seaweed could solve this challenge. 

Published in Advanced Materials, the research describes how fibres containing these seaweed-derived nanomaterials not only stop crystals from the sodium electrodes penetrating the separator, they also improve the batteries’ performance.

“The aim of a separator is to separate the functioning parts of a battery and allow free transport of the charge,” said Jing Wang, first author and PhD student in the Bristol Composites Institute (BCI).