Dangerous Liions
Lithium-ion (Liion) batteries can be dangerous – but this might be about to change.
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by Dave Cross
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Courthouse News reports that more than 120 lawsuits were brought against electronic cigarette battery vendors during the course of 2017. Plaintiffs claimed that they had suffered from a range of effects, from damaged clothing through to a collection of nasty looking injuries. One case, from 2015, saw over £1.5 million award to a victim of an explosion, after a mod robbed a vaper of one eye and smashed his facial bones.
In December, the very first lawsuit claiming wrongful death was filed, and said: “E-cigarettes will continue to cause these types of injuries unless and until those placing them in the stream of commerce are held accountable. Even industry proponents acknowledge that no universal method of testing e-cigarettes has been adopted.”
The problem that faces any user of a Liion battery is that stresses placed on it during improper use or charging creates internal growths called dendrites. Like horizontal stalactites and stalagmites, the dendrites rupture the structure of the battery until it is unable to perform properly and the product is launched into a thermal runaway scenario. The venting gases prevent an explosion unless those gases are then trapped by something like a poorly designed metal tube.
Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences believe they have come up with a solution. They have created a lithium-metal battery that puts a block on the formation of these dendrites.
Moreover, the new design doesn’t just address the problem of batteries breaking down dangerously, but the team have also reduced the internal resistance at the electrode/electrolyte interface – and obtaining both results has previously been considered to be exceptionally difficult at the same time.
The team developed an asymmetrical solid, with ceramic pressing against the anode (to prevent dendrite growth) and a sub-36µ polymer facing the cathode.
Professor Yu-Guo Guo said: "We have proposed an asymmetric solid electrolyte, which can concurrently meet the requirements of a dendrite-free lithium anode and a low interface resistance in solid batteries. We plan to design pouch cells with this asymmetric solid electrolyte for attaining a high energy density in solid batteries.”
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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