Batteries that "breathe" may ease your range anxiety about electric cars

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Time : 2022.04.18

For car owners who are hesitant to buy an electric car, the cruising range of an electric car is their biggest concern and anxiety.

To tackle range anxiety, clean energy researchers at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) have engineered a molecule to boost the performance of lithium-oxygen batteries, enabling electric vehicles to travel the same distance as gasoline-powered vehicles.

As today's cutting-edge technology, lithium-oxygen batteries are designed to generate electricity by maximizing energy density by inhaling oxygen from the air. To date, however, lithium-oxygen batteries（neware battery tester） have been plagued by a variety of challenges, including insufficient discharge capacity, energy inefficiency, and severe parasitic reactions, which the researchers' newly designed integrated molecule can address simultaneously.

Professor Guoxiu Wang from the University of Technology Sydney, who led the team, said this exciting discovery addresses several existing barriers and opens up the possibility of developing highly efficient, long-life, and high-energy-density lithium-oxygen batteries.

"Batteries are undergoing fundamental changes," Professor Wang said. "They will facilitate the transition to a climate-neutral society and open up new industrial opportunities for a country like Australia that is rich in the essential elements of battery production.

"They will also help power companies improve power quality and reliability, and help governments around the world become carbon neutral."

Professor Wang said his group's research details a new lithium-oxygen battery that operates via a new quenching/mediating mechanism that relies on a multifunctional molecule called PDI-TEMPO Direct chemical reaction with superoxide radical/lithium peroxide. The battery has a 46-fold increase in discharge capacity, a low charge overpotential of 0.7 volts, and an exceptionally long cycle life of over 1400 cycles.

"Our rationally designed PDI-TEMPO molecule opens up a new avenue for developing high-performance lithium-oxygen batteries," said Prof. Wang.

Molecular PDI-TEMPO synthesized by researchers improves performance of lithium-oxygen batteries

"Next-generation lithium-oxygen batteries capable of increasing driving range on a single charge will be a major leap forward for the electric vehicle industry.

"We believe that the integrated molecules we designed could significantly improve the performance of lithium-oxygen batteries and make the new generation of lithium-oxygen batteries more practical."

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