World ’s smallest battery offers “a view never be fore seen” to improve batteries

Sun Dec 12 12:15:17 CET 2010

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World’s smallest battery offers “a view never before seen” to improve
batteries

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<html><img title="The Medusa twist: formerly unobserved increase in length
and twist of the anode in a nanobattery. (Courtesy DOE Center for Integrated
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A benchtop version of the world’s smallest battery — its anode a single
nanowire one seven-thousandth the thickness of a human hair — has been
created by a team led by Sandia National Laboratories researcher Jianyu
Huang. To better study the anode’s characteristics, the tiny rechargeable,
lithium-based battery was formed inside a transmission electron microscope
(TEM) at the [[Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT)|
http://cint.lanl.gov/]], a Department of Energy research facility jointly
operated by Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories.

Says Huang, ''“This experiment enables us to study the charging and
discharging of a battery in real time and at atomic scale resolution, thus
enlarging our understanding of the fundamental mechanisms by which batteries
work.”'' Because nanowire-based materials in lithium ion batteries offer the
potential for significant improvements in power and energy density over bulk
electrodes, more stringent investigations of their operating properties
should improve new generations of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, laptops
and cell phones.

The tiny battery created by Huang and co-workers consists of a single tin
oxide nanowire anode 100 nanometers in diameter and 10 micrometers long, a
bulk lithium cobalt oxide cathode three millimeters long, and an ionic
liquid electrolyte. The device offers the ability to directly observe change
in atomic structure during charging and discharging.

An unexpected find of the researchers was that the tin oxide nanowire rod
nearly doubles in length during charging — far more than its diameter
increases — a fact that could help avoid short circuits that may shorten
battery life. “Manufacturers should take account of this elongation in their
battery design,” Huang said. (The common belief of workers in the field has
been that batteries swell across their diameter, not longitudinally.)
Huang’s group found this flaw by following the progression of the lithium
ions as they travel along the nanowire and create what researchers
christened the “Medusa front” — an area where high density of mobile
dislocations cause the nanowire to bend and wiggle as the front progresses.
The web of dislocations is caused by lithium penetration of the crystalline
lattice. “These observations prove that nanowires can sustain large stress
(>10 GPa) induced by lithiation without breaking, indicating that nanowires
are very good candidates for battery electrodes,” said Huang. “Our
observations — which initially surprised us — tell battery researchers how
these dislocations are generated, how they evolve during charging, and offer
guidance in how to mitigate them,” Huang said. “This is the closest view to
what’s happening during charging of a battery that researcher have achieved
so far.”

“The methodology that we developed should stimulate extensive real-time
studies of the microscopic processes in batteries and lead to a more
complete understanding of the mechanisms governing battery performance and
reliability,” he said. “Our experiments also lay a foundation for in-situ
studies of electrochemical reactions, and will have broad impact in energy
storage, corrosion, electrodeposition and general chemical synthesis
research field.” Source: From [[World’s smallest battery created at CINT
nanotechnology center|
https://share.sandia.gov/news/resources/news_releases/world%E2%80%99s-smallest-battery/]].
This work is detailed in the paper [[In Situ Observation of the
Electrochemical Lithiation of a Single SnO2 Nanowire Electrode|
http://www.nature.com/nchem/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nchem.901.html]] by
Jian Yu Huang, Li Zhong, Chong Min Wang, John P. Sullivan, Wu Xu, Li Qiang
Zhang, Scott X. Mao, Nicholas S. Hudak, Xiao Hua Liu, Arunkumar Subramanian,
Hongyou Fan, Liang Qi, Akihiro Kushima and Ju L <<slider chkSldr [[In Situ
Observation of the Electrochemical Lithiation of a Single SnO2 Nanowire
Electrode]]  [[Abstract»]] [[read abstract of the paper]]>>

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Henk Elegeert

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