Battery capacity remains a big issue in devices ranging from phones to electric vehicles, and one of the biggest constraints is the materials used to make electrodes.
A paper published at Nature Nanotechnology (abstract here), offers a promising lead for improvements as boffins say they've hit on a way to replace today's anode materials with lithium.
Today's Li-ion batteries store charge by accumulating the positively-charged ions onto an anode made from materials like graphite or silicon. The researchers say if the anode could be made of lithium, it would make batteries lighter while giving them greater energy density.
As noted in the paper, lithium has a specific capacity of 3,860 mAh g-1, which tops the available metals, and has a low anode potential, but it's physical properties have prevented it from being used as in anodes......
