Liquid-metal electrode to enable ultra-low temperature sodium–beta alumina batteries for renewable energy storage

Xiaochuan Lu (), Guosheng Li, Jin Y. Kim (), Donghai Mei, John P. Lemmon, Vincent L. Sprenkle and Jun Liu
Additional contact information
Xiaochuan Lu: Energy and Environment Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Guosheng Li: Energy and Environment Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Jin Y. Kim: Energy and Environment Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Donghai Mei: Fundamental and Computational Sciences Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
John P. Lemmon: Energy and Environment Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Vincent L. Sprenkle: Energy and Environment Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Jun Liu: Energy and Environment Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Nature Communications, 2014, vol. 5, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Commercial sodium–sulphur or sodium–metal halide batteries typically need an operating temperature of 300–350 °C, and one of the reasons is poor wettability of liquid sodium on the surface of beta alumina. Here we report an alloying strategy that can markedly improve the wetting, which allows the batteries to be operated at much lower temperatures. Our combined experimental and computational studies suggest that addition of caesium to sodium can markedly enhance the wettability. Single cells with Na–Cs alloy anodes exhibit great improvement in cycling life over those with pure sodium anodes at 175 and 150 °C. The cells show good performance even at as low as 95 °C. These results demonstrate that sodium–beta alumina batteries can be operated at much lower temperatures with successfully solving the wetting issue. This work also suggests a strategy to use liquid metals in advanced batteries that can avoid the intrinsic safety issues associated with dendrite formation.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms5578 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:5:y:2014:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms5578

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms5578

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().