![\"\"](\"https:\/\/dailybusinessgroup.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Screenshot-2026-06-30-at-07.36.58.png\")
Oxygen has the power to breathe new life into the next generation of batteries, according to new research. <\/p>\n
Scientists at Dundee university and Warwick Manufacturing Group have found that oxygen plays a more active role in storing and releasing a battery\u2019s energy than previously thought.<\/p>\n
The findings, published in the journal\u00a0Nature Nanotechnology, have the potential to develop and design\u00a0batteries for electronics and vehicles that charge faster, last longer, and are safer to use.<\/p>\n
Until now, scientists have believed that during the charging process oxygen has been passive and not directly involved in storing or releasing energy.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Crucial to these findings was theoretical work carried out at Dundee, with laboratory and further research carried out by experts at Warwick.<\/p>\n
Dr Hrishit Banerjee, a theoretical physicist at Dundee\u2019s Faculty of Science, Engineering and Business, who contributed to the research, said:\u00a0\u201cGlobal 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. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis has made understanding the technology underpinning electronic processes inside battery materials increasingly important.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cCurrent 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t <\/div>\n