Nanotube film drowns out battery

Battery researchers are fighting battles on many fronts in their efforts to advance our energy capabilities, and one of those centers on dangly tentacles of lithium called dendrites. These form as a battery charges and quickly degrade their capacity, so scientists are coming at them from all angles in attempts to quash them. New research out of Rice University describes yet another promising possible solution, by working a thin film of carbon nanotubes into the battery design as as way of drowning them out.

Dendrites are microscopic fibers of lithium that form on the anode of lithium-based batteries as they are charged. These become sharp needle-like structures that can pierce the battery's separator and cause it to short circuit, sometimes even resulting in the battery catching fire. One way to restrict their growth is to limit the charge rate of the battery, but with lithium-metal batteries promising much faster charging times and as much as 10 times the capacity of the lithium-ion batteries used widely today, scientists are keen to address the problem.

We have seen experimental versions designed to limit dendrite growth by using Kevlar nanofibers or the potential for entirely new kinds of electrolytes, the chemical solution that carries a battery's charge. In fact, last year the same group of Rice University researchers developed a lithium-metal battery made with asphalt that demonstrated faster charging times, as well as a heightened resistance to dendrite formation.

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