A new liquefied-gas-based electrolyte enables lithium batteries to operate efficiently at very cold temperatures — opening up the potential for electric cars that travel much farther distances in cold climates than they can with today’s batteries.
“It is generally agreed upon that the electrolyte is the primary bottleneck to improve performance for next-generation energy storage devices,” says Cyrus Rustomji, a postdoctoral researcher in the Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion at the Univ. of California, San Diego (UCSD). “Liquid-based electrolytes have been thoroughly researched, and many researchers are now turning their focus to solid-state electrolytes,” Rustomji says. “We have taken the opposite, albeit risky, approach and explored the use of gas-based electrolytes.”
Rustomji and his team of engineers have developed two electrolytes, one based on liquefied fluoromethane gas for lithium batteries and one based on liquefied difluoromethane gas for electrochemical capacitors. The UCSD researchers say they are the...
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