In 2007, Apple released the first generation iPhone, a landmark smartphone. Since then, the physical keyboard has become history and mankind has entered the touch screen era. At the same time, the endurance of smart phones has also become a big slot, and even many people begin to miss the Nokia era of super long endurance.
According to a mobile phone battery life ranking released by American magazine in February 2019, moto G7 power was rated as the smartphone with the strongest battery life in the world, with a battery life of 20 hours and 8 minutes, while Huawei mate20 ranked second was only 14 hours and 26 minutes.
However, at a time when smart phones integrate social, entertainment, life, work and other functions, such endurance ability is far from consumers' expectations. Even today, when mobile phones generally enter 4000mAh or even move towards 5000mAh, it still doesn't help. So how to break through the bottleneck of battery technology has become a big problem.
Recently, a team from Monash University in Melbourne said that the lithium sulfur (li-s) battery they manufactured is' the most efficient battery in the world ', and its performance is five times that of traditional lithium batteries.
Lithium sulfur battery is a kind of lithium battery. It is a lithium battery with sulfur as the positive electrode and metal lithium as the negative electrode. Due to the high energy density of sulfur, sulfur has great potential in battery technology - the energy storage capacity of sulfur lithium battery is 10 times that of lithium-ion battery. Moreover, elemental sulfur is abundant in the earth, with the characteristics of low price and environment-friendly. It is a very promising lithium battery.
The researchers involved in the above research said that the new lithium sulfur battery they developed can last five days after a single charge; It can also be applied to electric vehicles to make their endurance reach 1000 km. If this technology is widely used, it will be a major breakthrough in exploring more efficient energy technologies.
Although lithium sulfur batteries have great potential, they are mostly in the scientific research stage, and there is still a long way to go from mass production. The biggest problem may be the life problem, which is mainly related to the volume change of sulfur during charge and discharge.
Due to a certain density difference between sulfur and lithium sulfide, there is a large volume expansion rate in the process of complete lithium to lithium sulfide, and the volume shrinks sharply in the reverse process, which may lead to the collapse and damage of the electrode structure, resulting in the damage of the battery.
To solve this problem, the research team established chemical bonds between sulfur particles, giving them more space to expand and contract, thus prolonging the life of the battery.
If researchers can overcome the instability in the charging cycle, lithium sulfur batteries will take an important step towards full commercialization.
At present, the research team has received more than $2.5 million from the government and international partners to test this battery technology in cars and power grids from this year. Some battery manufacturers in Europe and China are interested in this technology.
The research results were published in the journal science advances.