Next Gen Tech: New Cathode material to make Na-Ion battery system eco-friendly, cost effective

Next Gen Tech: New Cathode material to make Na-Ion battery system eco-friendly, cost effective

The Community News/New Delhi

As environment challenges affect battery power retention, Indian scientists have developed new Cathode materials that will make Na-Ion batteries cost effective and eco-friendly.

The new Cathode materials in Na-Ion cells make batteries air, water stable, besides making power storage high performance and stable as compared to current tech.

At present, the battery storage systems face air, water instability and structural cum electrochemical instability of Sodium-transition-metal-oxide-based cathode.

The new tech has been developed by IIT Bombay Prof Amartya Mukhopadhyay’s group and it offers better stability as compared to prevalent systems.

The gamechanger tech can serve as cost effective and sustainable energy source for electronic devices as well as grid storage or for renewable energy sources.

The new tech could also prove beneficial to electric vehicles as current storage systems in these transport systems are highly harmful to climate and environment.

Being cost-effective, eco-friendly and sustainable alkali metal-ion battery system, it is needed to go beyond Li-ion system.

The discovery gains significance as India has abundance of Na-sources, making it extremely important in Indian context.

“Like any alkali metal-ion battery cell, a Na-ion cell has cathode and anode active materials, facilitating reversible insertion/removal of the charge carrier during charge/discharge of the cell.

In such a cell, the cathode material initiates as the Na-reservoir, with the cell performances depending on the structural/electrochemical stability of the electrodes, Na-transport kinetics, and various resistances (which are dynamic in nature),” an Indian government spokesperson said.

Prof Mukhopadhyay’s group exploited materials science and electrochemical principles to reveal the dominant factors and controlling parameters.

These can help develop high-performance Na-ion batteries in order to address the challenges.

“Accordingly, a universal design criterion has been designed to successful design and development new cathodes for Na-ion battery system and beyond.

The researchers have suggested a change in the alternate slab layered structure of the Na-TM-oxide structure of the Na-ion battery cathode by introducing “interslab” spacing by tuning the TM-O bond covalency,” he added.

The research is supported by Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB) under Indian Science and Technology department.

The content of research has been published in a paper of Chemical Communications journal.

Sanjeev Kumar

Senior Journalist and former Correspondent with Thomson Reuters at Punjab, The Statesman at Delhi and Shimla; and Mid-Day, Delhi

One thought on “Next Gen Tech: New Cathode material to make Na-Ion battery system eco-friendly, cost effective

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.