New findings at Oregon State University have overturned a scientific dogma that stood for decades, by showing that potassium can work with graphite in a potassium-ion battery - a discovery that could offer a challenge and a sustainable alternative to the widely-used lithium-ion battery.
Lithium-ion batteries are ubiquitous in devices all over the world, but the materials used are costly. A much cheaper potassium-ion battery has been shown to be possible. And the last time this possibility was explored was when Herbert Hoover was in1932.
"For decades, people have assumed that potassium couldn't work with graphite or other bulk carbon anodes in a battery," said Xiulei (David) Ji, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor of chemistry in the College of Science at Oregon State University.
"That assumption is incorrect," Ji said. "It's really shocking that no one ever reported on this issue for 83 years."
The Journal of the American Chemical Society published the findings from this discovery, which was supported by the US Department of Energy and done in collaboration with OSU researchers Zelang Jian and Wei Luo. A patent is also pending on the new technology.
The findings are of considerable importance, researchers say, because they open some new alternatives to batteries that can work with well-established and inexpensive graphite as the anode, or high-energy reservoir of electrons. Lithium can do that, as the charge carrier whose ions migrate into the graphite and create an electrical current.
Aside from its ability to work well with a carbon anode, however, lithium is relatively rare, found in only 0.0017 %, by weight, of the Earth's crust. Because of that it's comparatively expensive, and it's difficult to recycle. That will drive upwards its future cost.
That alternative, says Ji, may be potassium, which is 880 times more abundant in the Earth's crust than lithium. The new findings show that it can work effectively with graphite or soft carbon in the anode of an electrochemical battery. Right now, batteries based on this approach don't have performance that equals those of lithium-ion batteries, but improvements in technology should narrow the gap, he said.
OSU is seeking support for further research and to help commercialise the new technology, through the OSU Office of Commercialisation and Corporate Development.
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