Science News

Stanford Creates New Nanotech Battery That Won’t Overheat Or Explode

While others have developed batteries that automatically shutdown before overheating, researchers at Stanford University have developed a new lithium-ion battery that also powers itself back on once it’s cooled down — a new technology that may find application in hoverboards, potentially preventing their otherwise hazardous fires and explosions.

The new battery, which basically monitors its own temperature in order to determine when to turn itself on and off, harbors the potential to, according to a Stanford news release, prevent battery fires in an array of modern electronic devices from hoverboards to laptops, navigation systems to recliners. In other words, the new battery could prevent fires from erupting in an array of lithium-ion battery powered devices.

According to Zhenan Bao, a chemical engineering professor at the university, the new battery she and her colleagues designed is “the first battery that can be shut down and revived over repeated heating and cooling cycles without compromising performance.”

People have tried different strategies to solve the problem of accidental fires in lithium-ion batteries […] We’ve designed the first battery that can be shut down and revived over repeated heating and cooling cycles without compromising performance.

In order to demonstrate the feasibility of their new battery design, the researchers created an experiment–the results of which can be found in the journal Nature Energy–in which a nanoparticle enriched polyethylene film was attached to a the electrodes of the battery in such a fashion as to allow for the flow of electric current. As the nanoparticles in the film, which are spiky graphene-coated nickel particles, require physical contact with one another in order to conduct electricity, they’re able to effectively turn the battery off once it’s too hot, as the polyethylene film they’re embedded in stretches during thermal expansion. And when the battery has cooled down enough, the film retracts and contact between the nanoparticles is reestablished, turning the battery back on.

Zheng Chen, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University, explained in a statement that “the spiky particles have to physically touch one another” in order to conduct electricity, but when the polyethylene stretches during thermal expansion, “the particles spread apart, making the film nonconductive so that electricity can no longer flow through the battery.”

We attached the polyethylene film to one of the battery electrodes so that an electric current could flow through it […] To conduct electricity, the spiky particles have to physically touch one another. But during thermal expansion, polyethylene stretches. That causes the particles to spread apart, making the film nonconductive so that electricity can no longer flow through the battery.

Fellow researcher Yi Cui, an associate professor of materials science and engineering as well as photon science at the university, noted that in contrast with prior approaches, their new design “provides a reliable, fast, reversible strategy that can achieve both high battery performance and improved safety.”

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