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					</table><p>A team of researchers from the <a href="https://www.gatech.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Georgia Institute of Technology</a> has taken a novel approach, utilizing aluminum foil to create solid-state batteries with increased energy density and stability compared to the widely used lithium-ion technology.</p>
<p>Unlike traditional lithium-ion batteries, solid-state batteries utilize solid materials as the electrolyte, eliminating the flammable liquid electrolyte and significantly reducing the risk of fires.</p>
<p>Furthermore, solid-state batteries allow for integrating new high-performance active materials, paving the way for innovative battery designs.</p>
<p>The early attempts to use aluminum as a battery material failed due to the rapid fracturing and failure of pure aluminum foils in conventional lithium-ion batteries.</p>
<p>The team led by Matthew McDowell at Georgia Tech revisited this concept, realizing that aluminum could offer significant advantages as the anode material in solid-state batteries.</p>
<p><strong>Creating Aluminum Foil Anodes with &#8220;Microstructures&#8221;</strong></p>
<p>The research team took a different approach to address the challenges associated with using pure aluminum foils.</p>
<p>They incorporated small amounts of other materials to create aluminum foils with specific &#8220;microstructures&#8221; – unique arrangements of different materials. The team conducted tests with over 100 different materials to identify the most promising combinations for battery applications.</p>
<p>The team said the aluminum foil anodes exhibited exceptional performance and stability in solid-state batteries, surpassing the limitations of conventional lithium-ion batteries.</p>
<p>The aluminum anodes could store more lithium, leading to higher energy density and potentially longer driving ranges for electric vehicles on a single charge. Moreover, using aluminum foils directly as battery components streamlines the manufacturing process, making it more cost-effective.</p>
<p>The implications of this breakthrough extend beyond electric vehicles. Short-range electric aircraft, a growing area of interest, face limitations due to battery capacity.</p>
<p>The aluminum foil anodes present an opportunity to develop more powerful battery technologies enabling electric aircraft to cover longer distances efficiently.</p>
<p>The team at Georgia Tech, in collaboration with <a href="https://www.novelis.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Novelis</a>, is continuing its research to scale up the size of the batteries and understand how size influences the behavior of aluminum foils.</p>
<p>Additionally, they are exploring other materials and microstructures to create even more cost-effective foils for battery systems.</p>
<p>As the industry moves toward long-range vehicles and electric aircraft, researchers are pushing the boundaries of lithium-ion and searching for alternatives that offer higher energy density, improved stability, and enhanced safety.</p>
<p>The researchers at the institute said the emergence of solid-state batteries has been a game-changer in pursuing safer and more efficient energy storage.</p>
<p>Recently, a group of researchers from the University of Ulm and the University of Freiburg <a href="https://www.mercomindia.com/researchers-method-boost-storage-aluminum-ion-batteries" target="_blank" rel="noopener">developed</a> a positive electrode material made of an organic redox polymer based on phenothiazine for aluminum-ion batteries to help enhance its storage capacity.</p>
<p>In a similar study, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology <a href="https://www.mercomindia.com/aluminium-sulfur-batteries-outperform-lithium-ion-mit" target="_blank" rel="noopener">developed</a> a new battery made from aluminum and sulfur, two of the nature-abundant and cost-friendly materials.</p>
<p>Image Credit: Georgia Institute of Technology</p>
<div class="saboxplugin-wrap" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person" itemscope itemprop="author"><div class="saboxplugin-tab"><div class="saboxplugin-gravatar"></div><div class="saboxplugin-authorname"><a href="https://cms.mercomindia.com/author/gautamee-hazarika/" class="vcard author" rel="author"><span class="fn">Gautamee Hazarika</span></a></div><div class="saboxplugin-desc"><div itemprop="description"><div class="designboxt">
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<p><strong style="text-decoration: underline">Gautamee,</strong> Staff reporter at Mercom India<br />
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<a href="gautamee@mercomindia.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">gautamee@mercomindia.com</a></p>
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<div class="authorboxn"><img class="alignleft" src="https://mercomindia.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Picture1.jpg" width="102" height="102" /><a href="https://mercomindia.com/author/gautamee-hazarika/" rel="noopener">Gautamee</a> is a reporter at Mercom India. Prior to Mercom, Gautamee was working as a multimedia news journalist at ThePrint in New Delhi. She has received her Bachelors in English Honors and Masters in English Literature from St.Stephen&#8217;s College, University of Delhi.<a href="https://mercomindia.com/author/gautamee-hazarika/" rel="noopener">More articles from Gautamee</a></div>
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Aluminum Anodes Show Promise for Safer, Cheaper, and More Powerful Batteries


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					</table><p>Researchers at the <a href="https://www.gatech.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Georgia Institute of Technology</a> said they have discovered that halide perovskite solar cells are far less stable than previously thought and revealed the thermal instability that occurs within the cells’ interface layers.</p>
<p>However, they have also offered a path toward reliable and efficient halide perovskite solar technology. Lead halide perovskite solar cells promise superior conversion of sunlight into electrical power.</p>
<p>The research which was published in <em>Advanced Materials</em> has immediate implications for both academics as well as industry professionals working with perovskites in photovoltaics.</p>
<p>Halide perovskite solar cells possess the two necessary ingredients for any successful solar technology — they are both high-performing and low-cost.</p>
<p>But new solar cell materials are in constant competition to match the stability of silicon-based solar cells, which boast more than 25 years of reliability.</p>
<p>The most common strategy for coaxing high conversion efficiency out of these cells is to treat their surfaces with large positively charged ions known as cations.</p>
<p>However, the researchers identified these cations are too big to fit into the perovskite atomic-scale lattice, and, upon landing on the perovskite crystal, it changes the material’s structure at the interface where they are deposited.</p>
<p>The resulting atomic-scale defects limit the efficacy of current extraction from the solar cell.</p>
<p>The researchers’ concern was that during long periods of solar cell operation, the reconstruction of the interfaces would continue, and therefore they sought to understand and demonstrate how this process happens over time.</p>
<p>“Our work revealed that there is concerning instability introduced by treatment with certain cations,” said Carlo Perini, a research scientist in Correa-Baena’s lab and the first author of the paper.</p>
<p>However, the researchers affirmed the good news that, with proper engineering of the interface layer, enhanced stability of this technology is possible in the future.</p>
<p>The researchers learned that the surfaces of metal halide perovskite films treated with organic cations keep evolving in structure and composition under thermal stress.</p>
<p>They saw that the resulting atomic-scale changes at the interface can cause a meaningful loss in power conversion efficiency in solar cells.</p>
<p>Additionally, it was found that the speed of these changes depends on the type of cations used, suggesting that stable interfaces might be within reach with adequate engineering of the molecules.</p>
<p>“We hope this work will compel researchers to test these interfaces at high temperatures and seek solutions to the problem of instability,” Correa-Baena said.</p>
<p>The team hopes their work should point scientists to an area where they can focus on building more efficient and stable solar technologies.</p>
<p>Recently, researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin said that they had <a href="https://mercomindia.com/perovskite-cells-retain-efficiency-during-fluctuations/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">produced</a> perovskite solar cells to achieve efficiencies of well above 24%, which are resistant to drop under rapid temperature fluctuations between -60 and +80 degrees Celsius over one hundred cycles.</p>
<p>Researchers at the École Polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne and Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea <a href="https://mercomindia.com/researchers-improve-perovskite-solar-cells-degradation/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">identified</a> the cause behind the degradation of perovskite solar cells and developed a technique to improve its stability.</p>
<div class="saboxplugin-wrap" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person" itemscope itemprop="author"><div class="saboxplugin-tab"><div class="saboxplugin-gravatar"></div><div class="saboxplugin-authorname"><a href="https://cms.mercomindia.com/author/gautamee-hazarika/" class="vcard author" rel="author"><span class="fn">Gautamee Hazarika</span></a></div><div class="saboxplugin-desc"><div itemprop="description"><div class="designboxt">
<p><img class="alignleft" style="border-radius: 50%;height: 50px;margin-top: -4px;border: 1px solid #00b451" src="https://mercomindia.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Picture1.jpg" width="50" /></p>
<p><strong style="text-decoration: underline">Gautamee,</strong> Staff reporter at Mercom India<br />
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<a href="gautamee@mercomindia.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">gautamee@mercomindia.com</a></p>
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<div class="authorboxn"><img class="alignleft" src="https://mercomindia.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Picture1.jpg" width="102" height="102" /><a href="https://mercomindia.com/author/gautamee-hazarika/" rel="noopener">Gautamee</a> is a reporter at Mercom India. Prior to Mercom, Gautamee was working as a multimedia news journalist at ThePrint in New Delhi. She has received her Bachelors in English Honors and Masters in English Literature from St.Stephen&#8217;s College, University of Delhi.<a href="https://mercomindia.com/author/gautamee-hazarika/" rel="noopener">More articles from Gautamee</a></div>
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Research Says Highly Efficient Halide Perovskite Solar Cells Are Unstable

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