A new aluminum radical battery offers a safe, sustainable, and efficient alternative to lithium-ion batteries, using water-based electrolytes and biodegradable materials.
Researchers from Australia and China are working to develop the world’s first safe and efficient non-toxic aqueous aluminium radical battery.
Teams from Flinders University in South Australia and Zhejiang Sci-Tech University in China have reported the first stage of developing these novel batteries in a new article published by the prestigious Journal of American Chemistry, the flagship journal of the American Chemical Society.
Most batteries contain hazardous materials and can pollute the environment when disposed of in landfills or when thrown out elsewhere. Materials like lead, cadmium, and mercury can poison people and animals and contaminate soils and water, and they stay in the environment for a long time.
Dr. Kai Zhang, from Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, and Associate Professor Zhongfan Jia’s research lab at Flinders University collaborated on the (electro)chemistry of stable radicals in the most-used Lewis acid electrolyte (Al(Otf)3 and battery test.
Stable, Fire-Retardant, and Long-Lasting Performance
The team developed the first design of aluminum radical batteries which use water-based electrolytes that are fire-retardant and air-stable, delivering a stable voltage output of 1.25 V and a capacity of 110 mAh g–1 over 800 cycles with only 0.028% loss per cycle.
Professor Zhongfan Jia, from Flinders University’s College of Science and Engineering, hopes to use biodegradable materials for development of the soft-pack batteries in the future to make the product safe and sustainable.
Multivalent metal ion batteries, including Al3+, Zn2+, or Mg2+, use abundant elements of the Earth’s crust and provide much higher energy density than lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), says Professor Jia.
“In particular, aluminum-ion batteries (AIBs) attract great attention because aluminum is the third most abundant element (8.1%), which makes AIBs potentially a sustainable and low-cost energy storage system.”
Addressing Efficiency Challenges in Aluminum-Ion Batteries
However, one of the major challenges for current AIBs is the slow movement of Al3+ ion complexes, which leads to AIBs with low cathode efficiency. Organic conjugated polymers are emerging cathodes for AIBs to address the ion transport issue but their battery voltage output performance remains poor.
Stable radicals are a class of organic electroactive molecules that have been widely used in different organic battery systems. The first of this kind was commercialized by NEC® in 2012.
The Jia Lab at Flinders University has previously developed radical materials for organic hybrid LIBs, sodium-ion batteries, and all-organic batteries. These radical materials have never been applied in AIBs due to a lack of understanding of their (electro)chemical reaction in electrolytes.
Reference: “Lewis Acid-Induced Reversible Disproportionation of TEMPO Enables Aqueous Aluminum Radical Batteries” by Shangxu Jiang, Yihui Xie, Yuan Xie, Li-Juan Yu, Xiaoqing Yan, Fu-Gang Zhao, Chanaka J. Mudugamuwa, Michelle L. Coote, Zhongfan Jia and Kai Zhang, 23 June 2023, Journal of the American Chemical Society.
DOI: 10.1021/jacs.3c04203
The study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Australian Research Council.
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3 Comments
Great news, a pity that Chinese researchers are involved, they steal all the research for their own ends
As a joint partnership with Australia, I have a but more trust in the article. HOWEVER, China constantly missdirects and straight up lies about their accomplishments and studys for investment income. I would like to see more articles about this and evidence that this battery is scientifically accurate…
Agreed on both accounts, more accurately the CCP is not to be trusted and all studies and commercial enterprises are directly connected with the CCP. Its a shame the chinese people are not free, as one living abroad I’m hopeful for change.