Chinese-Led Team From Stanford Reports Major Breakthrough In Aluminum Battery Development

　　A Chinese-led research team from Stanford Universityannounced they have developed a rechargeable and high-performance aluminumbattery that could be a safe alternative of conventional batteries.

　　Aluminum is considered as an attractive material forbatteries, but commercially viable aluminum battery has previously not existed,contended the researchers in an academic paper published in the online editionof Nature Monday.

　　Previous researches into aluminum battery have failedto produce meaningful results, mostly due to thechallenge of finding proper materials for cathode and electrolyte to ensure thebattery running after repeated cycles of charging and discharging.

　　By using aluminum for anode, graphite for cathode andan ionic liquid as electrolyte, the Stanford scientists claim they are able tocreate aluminum-ion battery which is fast-charging, long- lasting, inflammable,inexpensive and flexible.

　　"This is really a breakthrough in developing therechargeable aluminum battery, because previously aluminum battery that isrechargeable essentially is not in existence, especially with the performancethat we are having today, " said Hongjie Dai, research team leader andprofessor of Chemistry at Stanford University, which is located at Stanford,the U.S. state of California.

　　He said that their aluminum battery is very safebecause the ionic electrolyte is nonflammable and aluminum and graphite arealso quite safe and much less reactive than lithium. It's safer than the widelyused lithium-ion battery, which can be a fire hazard.

　　Videos provided by the team show that to test thesafety of the battery, the researchers drilled through the aluminum batterypouch and it was still running for a while without catching a fire.

　　Besides safety, the aluminum battery developed by theStanford scientists has other major advantages, according to the researchers.For example, the battery can be charged and discharged very quickly. It can becharged in a matter of one minute, while it takes hours to charge the lithiumbattery that most smartphones and laptops use.

　　The aluminum battery can withstand over 7,500charge-discharge cycles without losing any capacity, while a typical lithiumbattery lasts about 1,000 cycles. Another feature of the aluminum battery isthat it can be bent or folded without causing damages to it or flammabilityproblems.

　　"This was the first time an ultra-fastaluminum-ion battery was constructed with stability over thousands ofcycles," the paper said.

　　According to the researchers, the battery now operatesat about two volts reversibly and that's a record for rechargeable aluminumbattery. They believed that the aluminum battery can be a safe alternative toalkaline battery and many other commercial batteries in wide use today.

　　The aluminum battery mayalso be used for electrical grid to rapidly store and release energy, said Dai,who noted for these future applications, however, the technology still needs tobe improved to increase the energy density of the aluminum battery.