Battery Metals

A team of Chinese researchers have turned cheap copper into a new material “almost identical” to gold, according to a study published in peer-reviewed journal Science Advances on Saturday.

The discovery will significantly reduce the use of rare, expensive metals in factories, said the authors.

Professor Sun Jian and colleagues at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Liaoning, shot a copper target with a jet of hot, electrically charged argon gas.

The fast-moving ionised particles blasted copper atoms off the target. The atoms cooled down and condensed on the surface of a collecting device, producing a thin layer of sand.

Each grain of the sand had a diameter of only a few nanometres, or a thousandth of the size of a bacterium.

The researchers put the material in a reaction chamber and used it as a catalyst to turn coal to alcohol, a sophisticated and difficult chemical process that only precious metals can handle efficiently.

“The copper nano particles achieved catalytic performance extremely similar to that of gold or silver,” Sun and collaborators said in a statement posted on the academy’s website on Saturday.

“The results … proved that after processing, metal copper can transform from ‘chicken’ to ‘phoenix’,” claimed Sun, who was not immediately available for comment.

Copper has a similar weight and look to gold. For centuries it has attracted alchemists who saw it as a gateway to instant riches.

The new material created by Sun’s lab cannot be used to make fake gold pennies. Its density remains the same as ordinary copper.

But the process could prove lucrative and provide a significant boost for Chinese industries, according to the researchers.

Precious metals remain central to modern economies. The components of electronic devices, for instance, contain a large amount of gold, silver and platinum.

About 40 smartphones can contain as much gold as a tonne of ore, it has been estimated.

Copper cannot function as well as gold in industrial applications, mainly because there are fewer electrons – subatomic particles with negative charge – buzzing around its nucleus.

These electrons are also relatively unstable, so copper tends to react more easily when combining with other chemicals.

The method developed by Sun’s team can inject a large amount of energy into copper atoms and made the electrons more dense and stable, they said.

The new material can resist high temperatures, oxidisation and erosion, according to the researchers.

It is “like a warrior with golden armour in a battlefield, capable of withstanding any enemy assault”, they said.

As a non-noble metal, copper oxidizes more easily to a positive valence (Cu+ or Cu2+) than same-family elements Au or Ag. In general, this chemical property is mainly determined by electron structure. Can we change the chemical properties of an element by regulating its electron structure? Can Cu act as a noble metal in catalytic reactions?

A team led by Dr. Sun Jian of the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) gives a positive answer. The team’s recently published paper in Science Advances shows that the electron structure of Cu can be changed, assisted by high energy plasma, making Cu exhibit significantly different catalytic behaviors than normal Cu in selective hydrogenation reactions.

The dimethyl oxalate (DMO) hydrogenation reaction, a typical multistep catalytic reaction producing methyl glycolate (MG), ethylene glycol or ethanol, was selected as a probe reaction for copper. In this reaction, the common product over supported Cu/SiO2 catalysts is one of the latter two owing to the inevitable co-existence of Cu+ and Cu0 for deep hydrogenation.

The sputtered (SP) Cu, which is bombarded by high energy argon plasma, can be “frozen” at zero valence when exposed to oxidation or reaction atmosphere at a very wide range of temperature, presenting noble-metal-like behaviors.

In DMO hydrogenation, a high selectivity (87%) towards the preliminary hydrogenation product, MG, a high-value chemical, was observed. The molecule level free energy surface in various reaction pathways by DFT calculation also verifies that “frozen” Cu0 is crucial for preliminary hydrogenation.

 

The EV Expo 2018 in Delhi was indeed power packed! Powered by lithium ion. Of the many battery manufacturers and dealers that were at the event, I did not expect that I would run into one that had garnered expertise in the lithium-ion battery repair and regeneration department. I didn’t even know there was such a thing like “lithium ion battery regeneration!”

Pastiche, a battery manufacturing unit based out of Panchkula, Haryana, in collaboration with a Chinese company A&S Power has developed a machine that it claims can repair and regenerate a lithium ion battery. The box is being manufactured in China and it’s a patented technology in India. Apparently, no other company offers this innovation in the country yet.

In order to repair a damaged battery, one just has to connect it to the machine. There is an algorithm involved in this process which analysis the battery voltage in each of the cells and then diagnoses it to fix any errors.

For example, there are 30 cells in your battery pack some of the cells might be at 2.6 volt, some at 2.9 and so on. This machine takes into account all cells and their respective voltage levels and then averages it. In the end, all the cells get balanced at 2.9 volts.

This results in better efficiency and a considerable jump in performance.

The kind of damage we are talking about is internal. Let’s take the example of an e-rickshaw. When the rickshaw takes more load it will require more power hence the rider will apply more throttle to the vehicle.

Subsequently, more current is drawn from the battery and this whole process takes a toll on the battery and during the course of time the battery underperforms.

This is where the battery regeneration/repair machine comes into play which increases the efficiency and the overall life-cycle of the battery pack. The machine takes 24-hours to completely diagnose and repair the battery.

The Lithium battery Regeneration/Repair machine (as the company calls it), offers both auto and manual mode to make the repair. Currently, the the white box is only compatible with 48 volt batteries and cells manufactured by Pastiche. The company is looking to push out models which will offer compatibility for batteries made by other manufacturers as well. Pastiche is not offering the machine for sale, but said that it will be made available on rental basis.”

Pastiche is offering door-step services for repairs whereby you email a complaint and the representative from the company will come to your house to repair the battery with the machine. Initially, Pastiche is looking to operate in zones like Chandigarh and Delhi and then later spread to other parts.

A team of researchers from Russia, UK, Japan and Italy has created a graphene-based terahertz detector.

The team explains that the reason for the inefficiency of existing terahertz detectors is the mismatch between the size of the detecting element, the transistor—about one-millionth of a meter—and the typical wavelength of terahertz radiation, which is about 100 times greater. This results in the wave passing the detector by without any interaction.

It was proposed in the past that to address this issue, the energy of an incident wave could be compressed into a volume comparable to the size of the detector. For this purpose, the detector material should support a special type of “compact waves” called plasmons. They represent the collective motion of conduction electrons and the associated electromagnetic field, not unlike the surface sea waves moving together with the wind as a storm sets in. In theory, the efficiency of such a detector is further increased under wave resonance.

Implementing such a detector proved harder than anticipated. In most semiconductor materials, plasmons undergo rapid damping—that is, they die down—due to electron collisions with impurities. Graphene was seen as a promising way out, but until recently, it was not clean enough.

The authors of the research presented a solution for the long-standing problem of resonant T-wave detection. They created a photodetector made of bilayer graphene encapsulated between crystals of boron nitride and coupled to a terahertz antenna. In this sandwich structure, impurities are expelled to the exterior of the graphene flake, enabling plasmons to propagate freely. The graphene sheet confined by metal leads forms a plasmon resonator, and the bilayer structure of graphene enables wave velocity tuning in a wide range.

The team has developed a compact terahertz spectrometer, several microns in size, with the resonant frequency controlled via voltage tuning. The researchers have also shown the potential of their detector for fundamental research: by measuring the current in the detector at various frequencies and electron densities, plasmon properties can be revealed.

“Our device doubles up as a sensitive detector and a spectrometer operating in the terahertz range, and it’s also a tool for studying plasmons in two-dimensional materials. All of these things existed before, but they took up a whole optical table. We packed the same functionality into a dozen micrometers,” said co-author Dmitry Svintsov, who heads the Laboratory of 2-D Materials for Optoelectronics at the Moscow Institute of Physics.

As convenient as portable batteries are — after all, the dreaded hunt for a spare outlet at your favorite coffee shop or at a crowded airport is the worst — they can be pretty tough to carry around. Bulky and heavy, they’re not usually the first thing you want to throw in your bag, even when they do end up saving your devices from dying. This LithiumCard Wallet Battery is a different story: only the size of five credit cards, it’s an engineering marvel despite the sleek exterior.

Beautifully made from durable billet aluminum, this portable battery not only fits easily into your pocket or bag, but it can also charge your devices at up to 1% of battery life per minute — so you can charge your device and be quickly on your way. You can also keep your iOS devices charged with the built-in Lightning connector — and even simultaneously charge your device and the LithiumCard with two flip-out charging cables.

With its ability to add charging power capacity to your device and its perfect portability (you can also stick it to another device that you’re carrying with the NanoStik pad, just as an alternative to storing the battery in your wallet), it’s perfect for travelers and workaholics alike. Usually, this LithiumCard Wallet Battery is $59.99, but you can get it here for $20.

Researchers at Stockholm University have developed a method to multiply the lifespan of nickel-metal hydride batteries. This means that the batteries can handle a great many more charging cycles without losing capacity. The new method also means that the batteries can easily be restored once they have begun to wear out, unlike other rechargeable batteries that must be melted down for recycling.

Most rechargeable batteries are based on either lead, nickel-cadmium (NiCd) or various combinations with lithium. Batteries based on nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) with an aqueous electrolyte are both eco-friendly and safe. The NiMH battery is developed from the nickel-hydrogen battery (NiH2). It has long been known that (NiH2) batteries have a superior lifespan compared to other battery types. This is why they are (for example) used in satellites in orbit in space, where the batteries must function for decades without servicing. The Hubble space telescope is one example, but NiH2 batteries are also spinning around our neighboring planets. However, these structures of the batteries are impractically large, because the hydrogen is stored in gas tanks. NiMH batteries can be made much more compact, because the hydrogen is stored in a metal alloy/metal hydride with a hydrogen density equivalent to that of liquid hydrogen. Researchers at Stockholm University has now developed a technique by which to achieve the same long lifespan for NiMH batteries as in the large NiH2 batteries.

The inspiration for the new technology came from a new NiMH battery manufactured by Nilar AB in Gävle.

In a NiMH battery, hydrogen is bound in the metal alloy. This solution is effective, but the battery ages because it dries out as the alloy slowly corrodes and consumes its water-based electrolyte. The corrosion also interferes with the internal balance between the electrodes in the battery. The breakthrough came when the research group discovered that they could counteract the aging process almost completely by adding oxygen, which restores the lost electrode equilibrium and replaces the lost electrolyte. This can be easily done in Nilar’s battery construction, because all cells share the same gas space. With the right balance of oxygen and hydrogen, a lifespan is achieved which exceeds all of today’s common battery types.

“The electrification of society, not least of all future electric cars, places new demands on distribution networks. This battery type is very well suited to evening out the load on the power grid at all levels over a long period of time, something which is a prerequisite for a fossil-free society in which intermittent solar and wind power will be connected to the network,” says Professor Dag Noréus of Stockholm University, who has extensive experience with NiMH development.

“This new battery technology is a major step along the way. Right now, Sweden is a world leader in the segment of rechargeable NiMH batteries,” says Dr. Yang Shen, whose thesis Development of metal hydride surface structures for high power NiMH batteries—extended cycle-life and lead to more effective recycling methods was presented on December 10 of this year and has been a central element of the work.