A New Cathode Material
A team of Korean researchers has developed a new high-capacity lithium-ion battery cathode material that maintains its performance even after being charged and discharged more than 500 times. The team said lithium-ion batteries can maintain high energy stably without the use of expensive cobalt.
Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) announced on Feb. 22 that professor Kang Byung-woo and Dr. Lee Jung-hwa of the Department of New Materials Engineering have developed a new material that is synthesized by removing cobalt from the cathode and increasing the amount of lithium.
The lithium-ion battery with the cathode material developed by the researchers had a stable discharge voltage of 3.6V with a capacity of 300 ㎃h per gram and high energy density of 1,100Wh per kilogram. This is an increase of more than 180 percent in energy density compared to batteries that use other materials.
In particular, even when the lithium-ion concentration is low, the battery maintains a stable structure. It retains 95 percent of its initial capacity even after being charged and discharged 100 times. The researchers explained that the battery can maintain a stable high energy level for hundreds of cycles as it retains about 83 percent of its initial capacity even after being charged and discharged 500 times.
The research results were published in the American Chemical Society's energy journal "ACS Energy Letters" on Feb. 1.