A visitor looks at Samsung SDI’s fifth-generation battery for electric cars at the InterBattery 2021 at COEX in Seoul on June 9, 2021. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Jan. 11 (Korea Bizwire) — The Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology said Tuesday it has developed a new technology that can extend the driving distance of electric vehicles by enabling the realization of a high-performance lithium metal battery with higher energy storage capacity.
The research team developed a new lithium battery with a capacity about 1.5 times higher than existing lithium batteries thanks to the use of vanadium oxide as a cathode material.
The theoretical capacity of vanadium oxide is about 1.5 to 2 times higher than that of existing transition metal oxide.
Vanadium oxide, however, has some limits, among others, its collapsible structure during the process of battery charging and discharging and slow electrochemical reaction speed resulting from low electron and ion conductivity.
To address such shortcomings, the research team developed a nanoplate-layered vanadium oxide cathode material using a new synthetic method.
Compared to one-dimensional nano-structure vanadium oxide, the newly-developed cathode material has an energy storage capacity that is 1.5 to 2 times higher, while having less loss in storage capacity even at fast charging and discharging speeds.
The lithium battery developed using the new material maintained its capacity up to about 80 percent even after 100 cycles of charging and discharging.
The research team succeeded in realizing a complete cell-composed high-performance lithium battery that features a 50 percent improvement on the basis of electrode potentials compared to existing lithium-ion batteries.
Kevin Lee (kevinlee@koreabizwire.com)
