As global demand for electric vehicles and renewable energy storage surges, so does the need for affordable and sustainable battery technologies.
As global demand for electric vehicles and renewable energy storage surges, so does the need for affordable and sustainable battery technologies. A new study led by researchers from the Department of Materials Science and NanoEngineering at Rice University, along with collaborators from Baylor University and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Thiruvananthapuram, has introduced an innovative solution that could impact electrochemical energy storage technologies. The research was recently published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.
Using an oil and gas industry’s byproduct, the team worked with uniquely shaped carbon materials — tiny cones and discs — with a pure graphitic structure. These unusual forms produced via scalable pyrolysis of hydrocarbons could help address a long-standing challenge for anodes in battery research: how to store energy with elements like sodium and potassium, which are far cheaper and more widely available than lithium.
“For years, we’ve known that sodium and potassium are attractive alternatives to lithium,” said corresponding author Pulickel Ajayan, the Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor of Engineering at Rice. “But the challenge has always been finding carbon-based anode materials that can store these larger ions efficiently.”
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Atin Pramanik, a postdoctoral associate in Ajayan’s lab, examines the battery prototype (Photo Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University).
