For the past decade, disordered rock salt has been studied as a potential breakthrough cathode material for lithium-ion batteries and a key to creating low-cost, high-energy storage for everything from cell phones to electric vehicles to renewable energy storage.
A new MIT study is making sure the material fulfills that promise.
Led by Ju Li, the Tokyo Electric Power Company Professor in Nuclear Engineering and professor of materials science and engineering, a team of researchers describes a new class of partially disordered rock salt cathode integrated with polyanions—dubbed disordered rock salt-polyanionic spinel, or DRXPS—that delivers high energy density at high voltages with significantly improved cycling stability.
“There is typically a trade-off in cathode materials between energy density and cycling stability … and with this work we aim to push the envelope by designing new cathode chemistries,” said Yimeng Huang, a postdoc in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering and first author of a paper describing the work published today in Nature Energy.
“(This) material family has high energy density and good cycling stability because it integrates two major types of cathode materials, rock salt and polyanionic olivine, so it has the benefits of both.”
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