Science Friday - Sodium Replaces Lithium In A New Type Of Battery

Episode Date: July 31, 2024

If nations are to meet their sustainable energy goals, experts argue that batteries will be a crucial part of the equation. Not only are batteries key for many technologies, they’ll also be necessary to meet energy demands with a power grid that is mainly supplied by renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Without batteries, power from those sources can’t be stored for use when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing.Right now, many technologies depend on lithium-ion batteries. While they certainly work well and have revolutionized mobile devices and electric vehicles, there are drawbacks. First, the lithium, cobalt, and nickel they require can only be found in some countries, and there have been accusations of unethical mining practices, including child labor. The mining and production processes also emit a large amount of CO2, and the batteries themselves can explode and cause fires, although these incidents are becoming less common.A promising, greener solution to our battery needs could be something called a solid-state battery. Lithium-ion batteries conduct electricity through a liquid electrolyte solution, while solid-state batteries do so with solid materials, such as ceramic, glass, and sulfides. This means they have lower risk of fires, charge faster, have higher voltages, and can be recycled. However, their development has taken longer than expected, due to cost, production hurdles, and lack of large-scale, real-world testing.Earlier this month, teams at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and the University of California San Diego published a paper in Nature Energy demonstrating the world’s first anode-free, sodium-based, solid-state battery architecture, which can charge quickly and last for several hundred cycles. Its main ingredient, sodium, is much more abundant than lithium, cobalt, and nickel, which could mean more affordable and environmentally friendly batteries in the future.Ira Flatow sits down with Dr. Y. Shirley Meng, a professor at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and chief scientist for energy storage science at Argonne National Laboratory, to talk about the advancement, and when we could expect to see these unique batteries in our devices.Transcript for this segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Sure, we love a good lithium-ion battery, but there's other kinds on the horizon. The technology advancement for all these new battery chemistries are extremely exciting. In the next three to five years, we could expect some very, very exciting new solid-state battery technologies coming online. It's Wednesday, July 31st, and this is Science Friday. I'm CyFright producer Charles Berkwist. To meet green energy goals, experts argue that a crucial component will be, batteries that store energy from renewable sources. For that to happen, we'll need a lot more batteries, and the current most popular kind, the lithium ion batteries you probably have in your laptop or

cell phone, not a great candidate for that kind of scale up. Here's Ira Flato to talk about advances in battery technology. Solid state batteries could offer some solutions here. That technology is still in development, but new research from teams at the University of Chicago, and UC San Diego details a first of its kind solid state battery architecture that trades out the rare and problematic lithium

for the much more abundant sodium. You know, the kind of stuff that's in salt. Their results were published in Nature Energy and here to tell us some more about the advancement is my guest, Dr. Shirling Mung, professor of molecular engineering at UChicago and Chief Scientist for Energy Storage Science at Argonne National Labor

and she was an author on that paper. Dr. Mung, welcome to Science Friday. Hi, Ira. Glad to be here. Nice to have you. Let's talk a bit first about why we need more batteries for a greener power grid. Well, as we transition to renewable sources like wind and solar, we all know that wind does not blow all the time and we only get about eight hours sunshine.

So I think it's very important for us to have the weather. energy storage mechanism to deal with the intermittency of these renewable energy sources. That's why battery is very, very critical for this energy transition. You know, a lot of people haven't heard. I don't think about solid state batteries. We've talked about it briefly on the show, but please give us a refresher and why there's such an appealing candidate for electric cars and this greener power grid. Certainly.

Solid state batteries is referring to replacing one of the, important component in the battery, the flammable liquid, to solid materials. This will enable us to build the batteries with very high energy density while not sacrificing the safety aspect. We are all very excited with this possibility because it's possible that we will now build an electric vehicle that per charge will lead to 500 miles. And it's possible that we can actually put the batteries in our house, just like a refrigerator for electrons, that provided us a lot of flexibility in terms of how we design the grid of the future. You said something very important. You talked about the solid state battery having the same

energy density of lithium batteries. That energy density concept is important, is it not? And how then do you build that into these new solid state batteries? Yeah, so energy density refers to how much energy we can pack in certain weight or how much energy we can pack in fixed volume. So for instance, you know, the way how current cars, electric vehicles are designed, from outside, you cannot really tell the difference if it's run on internal combustion engine or it's run on electric motor and the batteries. So the design constraint is that in that fixed volume, we have to put enough batteries that will keep the cars run the long distance. So I would say the energy density concept is a design constraint that all the battery people have to work within. And this is the reason why lithium-ion batteries made such a positive impact in the electric vehicle, because you can't really use your AA batteries or your that asset batteries for that purpose

because of their low energy density. And your research actually helped overcome a problem that allows you to use these new batteries? That's right. Yeah. As you mentioned in the beginning of the show, that lithium and what we use in the lithium ion batteries that contains nickel, cobalt, copper, those elements are sky. They take a lot of energy to mine them. So the work we are doing is trying to get rid of those critical elements.

Build batteries based on abundant materials, for example, sodium. And then we actually can eliminate copper and then just use aluminum as the current collector. And we can actually build batteries made with sodium, iron, magnesium, magnesium, oxygen. Yeah, so all those elements are what we call the rock-forming elements, and they are very abundant on the planet Earth. And some hardware and electric car companies have started to use these solid-state batteries. Is that right? In the prototyping stage, yes. Yes.

I think for mass production, we still have certain hurdles to overcome. Let's talk about the hurdles that need to be overcome, and why you think they can be overcome. The way how current lithium-ion batteries are being scaled up, they're done in the factory called the gigawatt factories. And those process right now utilize very large areas to produce the lithium-ion batteries. And we are hoping that the process of making batteries could be further simplified and the efficiency could be improved. So in solid-state battery manufacturing, the hurdles are at the moment it is still a nascent technology. So the gigafactories are built for lithium-ion batteries. So you can't really do a drop-in solution to make those solid-state batteries that they require a reinvention of how the factory should look like.

So I think this hurdle is rather challenging. And as many investments have already been made to scale the gigawatt factories worldwide, I think that the pioneers in this area for solid-state batteries really have to think about how we can do this with very strict timeline. And we actually have to showcase solid-state batteries indeed can outperform lithium-ion batteries. I think that scaling challenge is rather difficult. Your research talks about you're making a big discovery, which is the development of anode-free architecture for sodium-based solid-state batteries. What is that and why is that so important?

Sure. Let me just a step back to talk about how the architecture of a lithium-ion battery is. So in any batteries, you need a net. negative electrode, anode, and you need a positive electrode, cathode, and then you have the electrolyte. These three components are really critical. So in our architecture design, we figure out a way that during the manufacturing process, we can eliminate the need to fabricate the negative electrode, which is called anode. So we could imagine that the simplification of the manufacturing process could lead to

multiple benefits. One of them is, of course, you simplify the manufacturing step. And the other one is that you can reduce the cost because we are not implementing the negative electrode during the manufacturing process, but the anode will be formed during the first operation of the batteries. I think that's a novel concept that comes out from our research, particularly we are actually doing it with the chemistry that based on sodium, some kind of, you know, elements that everyone knows that very abundant is vastly available. So is that instead of lithium? Exactly. Instead of lithium. In our battery, we don't need to use lithium. And the sodium, actually, if you recall the periodic table on the first column of the product table, sodium is right below lithium. A little bit

heavier, but counterintuitively, people don't realize that sodium can move very fast. Sodium ions can move very fast in both liquid and solid. So actually, the sodium solid-state batteries can also offer fast-charging capabilities and a very high power rate. So we don't have to sacrifice much of the performances when we replace lithium with sodium. Why didn't we do that just at the beginning? It's so much easier. Yeah, there's an interesting story here that, in fact, sodium is not beyond the Lithian.

We are behind the Lithian. In fact, initial research was initiated by a group of French scientists back in 1960s during the first Ory embargo crisis. However, I would say the scientists who work on the lithium chemistry, made their breakthroughs in enabling so-called intercollation chemistry. Yeah, I know it's a jargon, but basically they found the graphite and the lithium cobal oxide, you know, these two materials can reversibly insert and de-insert lithium for thousands of cycles. Yeah, so I think that one of the main reasons is that the lithium outperformed the sodium

back in the 70s and sodium was really behind. So we're taking like a back to the future sort of thing. Oh, I love that first. Yeah, exactly. Back to the future. So is there a certain kind of application for sodium solid state batteries that they would really thrive in? I certainly hope so. Even though I think our research is at relatively low technology readiness level, we call the TRL level two or three. So we demonstrate. the concept that sodium solid-state batteries with annull-free architecture could work. But we project that the sodium solid-state batteries can do as well as some of the lithium batteries.

So you could imagine that if electrification for mobility is everywhere, I think in countries like India, China, actually in major metropolitan cities like Paris, Paris, Chicago, LA, we could actually use sodium batteries that provide driving ranges, you know, comparable to that offered by lithium. So, yeah, I think the supply chain security is that being offered by sodium. It's very exciting. I think as a scientist, we typically don't think about the geopolitics, but in the field of energy transition, we don't have a choice.

I think we do have to worry about the supply chain security. And I think the ability for us to make sodium-based batteries diversify the choices for batteries, it's always a good thing when we have more diversified choices. Well, that's an interesting point because I know your chief scientist for energy storage at the famous Argonne National Laboratory, a federal laboratory. how much of your work then and moving forward with sodium batteries and batteries in general depends on government incentives to keep this going? I think it's an important role that the government incentive will play. Because the energy crisis and the climate change that we are facing, I think that in order to meet the time constraint that we probably have two decades,

to fix our grid of the future. I think that the government incentive will play a critical role in terms of how we could scale things fast and how we can actually make sure that localization, the domestic manufacturing of important energy storage technologies could happen. So Agon actually, back in 1992, is one of the first places in the United States that started research on energy storage,

particularly lithium-ion batteries. I think, you know, we continue to focus on how we can actually provide the best efficient energy technologies for the U.S. And with the current focus, it's really trying to offer a very secure supply chain, so that the domestic manufacturing of those important technologies could be accomplished. Yeah, I understand the teams have filed a patent through UC San Diego for this discoveries. And whenever we get a new discovery, especially in energy, and you ask, when are we going to see this? It's always, well, it's just five years down the road or it's 30 years away if it's fusion. It's always that far in the distance.

How long do you think it really will be before solid state battery tech is at a place where it could be manufactured on a large scale? Yep. I think this crystal ball I have back in my office is really working quite well. So let me just say a few things about the future of solid state batteries. I think a lot of people didn't realize that polymer-based solid-state batteries is always. already a commercial product. In fact, some people are riding those buses in Paris right now during the Olympics. Really?

Yep. The Lidian version of the solid-state batteries, I think the ones that base on so-called ceramic-based solid-state electrolytes, many tier 1 manufacturing battery companies are working on it right now. Toyota has made a public announcement, followed by Samsung. and I believe the latest one probably is Nissan. I think that we will see some very interesting solid-state battery design, commercial products probably 27, 2027 or 28. For the technology we are working on for sodium, I think that if the manufacturing process, we could leverage on what's already been developed by the companies who are working on lithium

solid state, sodium solid state can happen in the next five years, five to seven years. I do want to emphasize that a lot of it will really depend on the determination of the entire society that we are indeed going for electrification of everything. I think there are a lot of doubts and the speculations that maybe we won't be able to do it, I hope that the sodium battery concept show people that lithium is not the only option that we can make sodium batteries work. And perhaps in the future, some people will make aluminum batteries, magnesium batteries work. So I think the technology advancement for all these new battery chemistries are extremely exciting.

So I want to tell you that in the next three to five years, we could expect some very, very exciting new solid-state battery technologies coming online. Well, I can't wait, Dr. Mung. Thank you for enlightening us on that, and we'll keep an eye out. Pleasure to chat with you, Ira. Dr. Shelley Mung, Professor of Molecular Engineering at University of Chicago, chief scientist for energy storage science at famous Argonne National Laboratory. That's it for today. Tomorrow, we'll take a look behind your fridge. But no need to clearing out those dust bunnies. We're talking about the history of refrigeration and how it changed our lives. I'm sci-fi producer Charles Burkwurst. Thanks for listening. We'll see you soon.