Nowadays some of the companies which are in the field of electronic media are working to build the safe Lithium-ion batteries that don’t catch the fire, a team of researchers has developed a practical and inexpensive way to help prevent these fires, so that no incident will happen.
In a lithium-ion battery, a thin piece of plastic separates the two electrodes.
“If the battery is damaged and the plastic layer fails, the electrodes can come into contact and cause the battery’s liquid electrolyte to catch fire,” said Gabriel Veith from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, US Department of Energy’s (DOE), and project’s principal investigator. “
To make up the safer batteries, some of the researchers from the University of Columbia use a nonflammable, solid electrolyte. But these solid-state batteries require significant retooling of the current production procedure. As a better alternative, Veith’s team mixed an additive into the conventional electrolyte to create an impact-resistant electrolyte.
It solidifies when hit, which prevents the electrodes from even touching if the battery is damaged at the time of a fall or crash. If the electrodes are not going to touch each other, then the battery doesn’t catch fire. Even better, has incorporated the additive would require only minor adjustments to the conventional battery manufacturing process.
“If you put the mixture on a cookie tray, it flows like a liquid until you start poking it, and then it becomes a solid,” said Veith. The substance gets liquefies again, when the pressure is removed.
Veith now plans to enhance the entire system with an ease so the part of the battery that’s damaged in a crash would remain solid, while the rest of the battery would go on working. The team is as of now working and aiming to build applications such as drone batteries, but they would eventually like to enter the automotive market.
The team presented the results at the 256th National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Boston on August 22.
