Sodium Ions: This Could Be The Future Of Batteries

A group of researchers has developed a new conductor for sodium-ion batteries in solid-state, which is stable when incorporated in high voltage oxide cathodes, the new material, called NYZC, may represent the future of batteries.

This electrolyte can significantly improve the efficiency and useful life of sodium-ion batteries, since the prototype built in the laboratory reached a duration of more than 1000 cycles, maintaining a rate of 89.3% of its capacity. This result was far superior to that achieved by other solid-state sodium batteries.

The discovery of NYZC could mean a way for the industry to finally adopt sodium-ion batteries, which promise to be cheaper and environmentally friendly since sodium is a more abundant material and has a less aggressive extraction process in comparison to lithium-ion technology, which is the most used today.

The study was a joint effort by researchers from the Universities of California of San Diego and Santa Barbara, in addition to Stony Brook University, New York, the TCG Center for Research and Education in Science and Technology in Calcutta, India, and Shell and was published in the February 23 issue of  Nature Communications.

High production cost is still an obstacle to product scalability. Credit: Vincent Guilly / CEA Tech

Currently, the great difficulty for researchers studying sodium-ion batteries is to find a material that is a good energy conductor for relatively low-cost batteries. NYZC is not yet this material, but it could be the key to its discovery.

"The industry wants cell-level batteries to cost $ 30 to $ 50 per kWh," said Shirley Meng, a professor of nanoengineering at the University of California at San Diego. The value is about a fifth of what batteries cost today.

While the issue of cost is still an obstacle, the team promises to work on options to make batteries cheaper and more scalable. One is the replacement of halide materials in order to increase the overall energy density of the battery. "We won't stop until we get there," promises Meng.