By TATSUYUKI KOBORI/ Staff Writer
January 9, 2022 at 07:00 JST
A prototype lithium-air battery jointly produced by the National Institute for Materials Science and SoftBank Corp. that measures about two centimeters (Provided by the research team)
SoftBank Corp. and Japan’s National Institute for Materials Science jointly developed a lithium-air battery with twice the energy capacity per weight as current lithium-ion models, adding fresh momentum to the race to commercialize a next-generation power source.
They aim is to put the battery into practical use in five to 10 years.
Their research was published Dec. 15 in the science journal Materials Horizons at (https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2022/MH/D1MH01546J).
Lithium-air batteries use lithium for the negative electrode and oxygen in the air for the positive electrode to generate a chemical reaction that produces power.
The technology allows the batteries to be vastly reduced in size and made lighter than conventional ones with the same capacity.
The prototype battery’s weight energy density, which indicates performance, came to 500 Wh/kg, or about twice that of current lithium-ion batteries.
The research team checked more than 100 research papers from around the world to confirm that their lithium-air battery had the highest weight energy density.
However, the prototype battery reached its lifespan when it was charged and discharged about 10 times. Each of the processes took 10 hours.
“We achieved a world-class energy density with the lithium-air battery,” said Shoichi Matsuda, a senior researcher at the NIMS based in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture. “It marks a big step toward putting it into practical use.”
However, he acknowledged that the team needs to improve the materials it uses.
The technology is regarded as the “ultimate secondary battery” as it offers the prospect of storing several times the capacity of lithium-ion batteries now in use.
As such, it has attracted attention in global efforts to develop next-generation models along with all-solid-state batteries and state-of-the-art lithium-ion batteries for use in electric vehicles, drones and other devices.
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