Materials for energy
A prototype described as the world’s strongest functional structural battery has been unveiled by researchers in Sweden. The device has an elastic modulus that is much higher than any previous design and was developed by Leif Asp and his colleagues at Chalmers University of Technology. The battery could be an important step towards lighter and more space-efficient electric vehicles (EVs).
Structural batteries are an emerging technology that store electrical energy while also bearing mechanical loads. They could be especially useful in EVs, where the extra weight and volume associated with batteries could be minimized by incorporating the batteries into a vehicle’s structural components.
In 2018, Asp’s team made a promising step towards practical structural batteries – and was rewarded with a mention in Physics World‘s Top ten breakthroughs of 2018. That year, the team showed how a trade-off could be reached between the mechanical strength of highly ordered carbon fibres and the desired electrochemical properties of less-ordered structures.
Building on this, Asp and colleagues unveiled their first-generation structural battery in 2021. “Here, we used carbon fibres as the negative electrode but a commercial lithium iron phosphate (LFP) on an aluminium foil as a positive electrode, and impregnated it with the resin by hand,” Asp recalls.
