August 25th, 2021
The German-French Research Project MOLIBE at HIU is on the way to a completely solid, metal-free rechargeable Battery has reached an important intermediate step: The scientists have successfully developed organic full cells that run stably for several hundred cycles.
In order for the energy turnaround to succeed, renewable energies and power grids need to be expanded – but also sustainable and safe energy storage systems. Lithium-ion batteries are considered to be the most promising technology for reversible energy storage, but are currently still too expensive and unsafe for widespread use. The high costs arise from the use of metals such as cobalt, nickel or lithium copper. The safety concerns apply to the easy flammability and the low stability of the liquid electrolytes.
The MOLIBE project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is therefore working on completely solid, metal-free, rechargeable batteries made from organic active materials and polymer electrolyte systems. The researchers have now achieved their first major success: They have developed organic full cells that run stably for several hundred cycles, but which still contain Li ions. One of the two half-cells developed is even stable for over 5,000 cycles.
The efficient and sustainable synthesis process for the active materials is an important building block for a possible commercialization of the technology. The French project partner CEA is therefore already planning a patent application for the process.
The next steps of the project are already being planned: The scientists want to introduce a new polymer electrolyte developed by the project. You want to increase the cell voltage to greater than 2.0 volts in order to increase the energy density and replace the Li ions with less critical metal ions such as sodium or, ideally, even with non-metallic ions.
Further information & links
https://www.fona.de/de/themen/leitinitiative-energiewende.php