The father of the lithium-ion battery helps solve a problem that has dragged on for four decades

In the late 1970s, Stanley Whittingham was the first to describe the concept of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, an achievement for which he shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. However, even he could not have anticipated the complex materials science challenges that would arise when these batteries began to power portable electronics.
A persistent technical problem is that every time a lithium-ion battery is installed in a device, at least a fifth of its energy capacity is lost before the device can be recharged for the first time. That happens every time it is installed in a laptop, a camera, a wristwatch or even an electric vehicle.
The cause of this loss is impurities that form on nickel-rich cathodes: the positive side of a battery through which stored energy is discharged.
To find a way to retain that lost capacity, Whittingham led a team of researchers that included his colleagues at the State University of New York and scientists from the Brookhaven Department of Energy and Ridge National Laboratories . The team used X-rays and neutrons to test whether treating a cathode material with lithium-free niobium oxide can lead to a longer-lasting battery. The result of the study, published in ACS Energy Letters , seems to indicate that the problem has been solved.
“We tested NMC 811 on an oxide cathode material after predicting that lithium-free niobium oxide would form a lithium niobium oxide nanolayer on the surface that would conduct lithium ions and allow them to penetrate the cathode material,” Whittingham has stated .
Lithium batteries have cathodes made with alternating layers of lithium and nickel-rich oxide materials (chemical compounds that contain at least one oxygen atom), because nickel is relatively cheap and helps achieve higher energy density and higher energy efficiency. storage capacity at a lower cost than other metals.
However, the nickel in the cathodes is somewhat unstable and therefore easily reacts with other elements, causing the cathode surface to be covered with undesirable purities that reduce the battery storage capacity by between ten and eighteen percent during its first charge and discharge cycle.