Oxygen has the power to breathe new life into the next generation of batteries, according to new research.
Scientists at Dundee university and Warwick Manufacturing Group have found that oxygen plays a more active role in storing and releasing a battery’s energy than previously thought.
The findings, published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, have the potential to develop and design batteries for electronics and vehicles that charge faster, last longer, and are safer to use.
Until now, scientists have believed that during the charging process oxygen has been passive and not directly involved in storing or releasing energy.
This new research, however, challenges that long-held assumption. Using advanced computer modelling and laboratory experiments, researchers found that oxygen plays a much more active role in the charging and discharging process.
Crucial to these findings was theoretical work carried out at Dundee, with laboratory and further research carried out by experts at Warwick.
Dr Hrishit Banerjee, a theoretical physicist at Dundee’s Faculty of Science, Engineering and Business, who contributed to the research, said: “Global populations have become increasingly reliant on renewable energy technologies and advanced energy storage systems from everything to the mobile phones in our pockets to the cars we drive.
“This has made understanding the technology underpinning electronic processes inside battery materials increasingly important.
“This research is crucial and gives us a new understanding of how batteries function at a fundamental level. By improving our knowledge of what is occurring at a tiny, atomic level within batteries, we can make big leaps in improving their performance in the real world.
“Current technologies are limited by the understanding of the underlying physics of how and why batteries fail over time. This general framework will help design batteries with much longer lifetimes.”
#Oxygen #power #generation #batteries #Daily #Business