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Apr 08, 2024

Georgia Tech Researchers Develop Aluminum Foil Batteries for Improved Performance

High energy density and stability are key qualities in a good battery. While lithium-ion batteries have dominated the market for the past three decades, battery researchers are now looking for safer,

High energy density and stability are key qualities in a good battery. While lithium-ion batteries have dominated the market for the past three decades, battery researchers are now looking for safer, less expensive, and more powerful alternatives.

At the Georgia Institute of Technology, a team of researchers led by Matthew McDowell, Associate Professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Materials Science and Engineering, has made significant progress in developing aluminum foil batteries with higher energy density and greater stability.

The use of aluminum as a battery material offers several advantages. It is cost-effective, highly recyclable, and easy to work with. While aluminum was previously deemed unsuitable for batteries due to its tendency to fracture and fail after a few charge-discharge cycles, the introduction of solid-state batteries has changed the game.

Solid-state batteries, which utilize a non-flammable solid material, are considered safer than conventional lithium-ion batteries. These batteries also allow for the incorporation of new high-performance active materials.

The Georgia Tech team collaborated with Novelis, a leading aluminum manufacturer and the world’s largest aluminum recycler, to explore the potential of aluminum foil as a material in the battery’s anode. Pure aluminum foils performed poorly in battery tests, but the researchers experimented with mixing small amounts of other materials to create foils with unique microstructures.

Over 100 different materials were tested, and the team found that the aluminum anode with the modified microstructure exhibited improved performance and stability in solid-state batteries. The aluminum anode was able to store more energy and lithium than other types of anode materials, resulting in batteries with higher energy density.

One of the notable advantages of the aluminum anode is its cost-effectiveness. Using foil directly as a battery component eliminates several manufacturing steps, making the production process more efficient and affordable.

The development of aluminum anode batteries has significant implications for the electric vehicle and electric aircraft industries. Electric vehicles could potentially travel longer distances on a single charge, while electric aircraft could overcome the limitation of short-range flights. The McDowell team’s aluminum anode batteries have the potential to pave the way for more powerful battery technologies.

The research team is currently scaling up the size of the batteries to further understand how size affects the behavior of aluminum. They are also actively exploring other materials and microstructures to develop extremely affordable foils for battery systems.

Overall, this research showcases the rejuvenation of aluminum as a battery material, thanks to new knowledge and solid-state battery technology. The promising performance of aluminum foil batteries opens up possibilities for more energy-optimized and cost-effective battery cell architecture.

Reference:Liu, Y., et al. (2023). Aluminum foil negative electrodes with multiphase microstructure for all-solid-state Li-ion batteries. Nature Communications. doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-39685-x.