Lithium News

A new construction biomaterial that uses living microorganisms to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere has been developed by a UCL graduate student and colleagues.

The biomaterial, developed by a master’s student in the UCL Bio-Integrated Design program, could dramatically reduce the construction industry’s carbon footprint if mass produced and widely adopted.

It was unveiled as part of an art installation in St Andrews Botanic Garden in Scotland, and incorporates living cyanobacteria into translucent panels that can be mounted on to the interior walls of buildings. As the microorganisms embedded within these panels grow using photosynthesis, they pull carbon dioxide out of the air, and through a biomineralization process, affix it to calcium to create calcium carbonate, locking away the carbon.

A kilogram of this biomaterial, known as a cyanobacterial engineered living material or C-ELM, can capture and sequester up to 350g of carbon dioxide, while the same amount of traditional concrete will emit as much as 500g of carbon dioxide. A 150-square-meter wall cladded with these C-ELM panels will lock away approximately one ton of carbon dioxide.

Postgraduate student Prantar Tamuli (UCL Biochemical Engineering) said, “My aim by developing the C-ELM material is to transform the act of constructing our future human habitats from the biggest carbon-emitting activity to the largest carbon-sequestering one.”

Tamuli was inspired to develop the material by studying stromatolites—natural stony structures formed over millions of years from sediments trapped by some of the Earth’s most ancient living organisms, algal mats.

Tamuli developed C-ELM under the guidance of research supervisors during his earlier MSc degree in Bio-Integrated Design. Over the COVID-19 lockdown in London, he developed a new process for culturing the cyanobacteria at his home without access to his lab or conventional equipment. A patent for the C-ELM technology has been filed by UCL’s commercialization company, UCL Business.

Tamuli focused on the species Kamptonema animale, a photosynthetic cyanobacteria that grows in long strands, making it easy to bind the microorganisms to the surrounding material within the panels. The calcium carbonate that the cyanobacteria produce helps to strengthen and reinforce the panels.

The panels themselves are designed to offer a range of cosmetic and structural benefits for buildings. They are lightweight, sound-absorbing, translucent enough to transmit light through and thermally insulating so as to enhance the energy efficiency of buildings.

The first such panels were publicly demonstrated at an installation inside the Bioscope pavilion in St Andrews Botanic Garden in Scotland. Designed by the design collective Studio Biocene, the display showcased low-carbon and low-impact construction methods that mimic a natural environment.

Professor Marcos Cruz (UCL Bartlett School of Architecture and co-director of the Bio-Integrated Design Program) said, “The promise of this kind of biomaterial is tremendous. If mass-produced and widely adopted, it could dramatically reduce the carbon footprint of the construction industry. We hope to scale up the manufacture of this C-ELM and further optimize its performance to be better suited for use in construction.”

The Bio-Integrated Design Program at UCL is jointly run by the Bartlett School of Architecture, and the Department of Biochemical Engineering, part of the UCL Faculty of Engineering. Together, the program merges practices from a range of disciplines with the aim of creating a built environment closely intertwined with nature.

Dr. Brenda Parker (UCL Biochemical Engineering and co-director of the Bio-Integrated Design Program) said, “By breaking down traditional disciplinary silos we can enable discoveries such as these. It is an exciting moment where biotechnology has the potential to transform how we design and build more sustainably.”

Studio Biocene is a design collective pioneering a bio-integrated green transition, rooted in practice and academia. The team shares an ambition to scale up novel ways of designing with and for living systems, and was co-founded by Professor Marcos Cruz and Dr. Brenda Parker.

China’s AutoFlight currently holds the record for world’s longest eVTOL flight with the 155.7-mile (250.6-km) mark it set in 2023 in the dramatic Prosperity air taxi designed by former McLaren and Lilium draft king Frank Stephenson. Now its robust battery and range-maximizing technology is poised to get a major boost, as the company has signed a collaborative agreement with CATL, the global battery leader that’s launched some of the market’s most energy-dense battery offerings. That 155-mile achievement is sure to be overshadowed by what this heavy-hitting duo comes up with in the future.

AutoFlight announced this month it has signed an exclusive investment and cooperation agreement that will see them partner on joint research and development of aviation-grade battery technology. The agreement will also see CATL invest hundreds of millions of dollars in AutoFlight.

This is huge news, and it’s hard to imagine another two-company team-up that could make such a splash in the eVTOL space. Not only is CATL the world’s largest battery manufacturer, and a supplier of major automakers around the world, including Tesla, BMW and Toyota, it’s also been developing some of the most energy-dense batteries in the world, including a 500-Wh/kg condensed battery aimed at the eVTOL market.

In July, CATL announced it had performed a test flight of a 4-ton aircraft using the battery. Even more impressively, ChinaDaily reported at the time that CATL believes the battery tech is capable of supporting a currently unfathomable 2,000- to 3,000-km (1,240 to 1,865-mile) range in an 8-ton electric aircraft within just a few years’ time.

By partnering with AutoFlight, CATL officially establishes its presence in the eVTOL market, where its long-range battery prowess could be particularly disruptive. And it puts serious money down on a very promising horse.

In three short years, we’ve seen AutoFlight make the transition from drones to air taxis with an initial 2021 prototype, bring on a world-renowned vehicular design chief in Stephenson to evolve the design into the arresting Prosperity passenger eVTOL, rapidly achieve transition flight with the Prosperity I proof-of-concept, and quickly tick off additional milestones like the 155-mile distance record and “world first intercity air taxi flight.”

AutoFlight also obtained type certification from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) for its CarryAll cargo aircraft earlier this year, claiming a world first for a one-ton-class eVTOL. It has since applied for type certification for the five-seat Prosperity eVTOL taxi.

In its current form, the Prosperity is designed around a single pilot and four passengers, relying on 10 lift propellers and three push props powered by a 160-kWh battery to carry a payload up to 400 kg (880 lb). It boasts a top speed of 200 km/h (124 mph) to go along with its 250-km range.

Just last week, Prosperity successfully completed a test flight over China’s Yangtze River in the city of Nanjing. Demonstrating the absolute FOMO-generating, traffic-busting potential of eVTOL tech at large, the flight turned what would have been a 25-minute 20-km (12.4-mile) drive across the bridge into a direct five-minute 5.5-km (3.4-mile) lift-and-cruise.

Moving forward, AutoFlight and CATL plan to pool resources and technical expertise toward enhancing the energy density and overall performance of eVTOL batteries in support of longer flight distances and higher payload capacities. The extra funding will also enable it to expedite the further R&D and airworthiness certification of the Prosperity air taxi.

Researchers at Yokohama National University have developed a stretchy, high-precision measurement wearable device that combines soft polymer materials and rigid electronic elements. This device can accurately measure inertial data even if it extends up to 2.5 times its length.

The combination of this stretchable high-precision device and machine learning achieved multiple types of motion recognition with a high accuracy rate. The potential applications of this technology have led to the realization of systems that integrate various soft and rigid electronics with information technology.

Stretchable, wearable devices that can sense physical and bioelectrical information quickly and accurately are increasingly being used for things like health monitoring and motion measurement. However, making a device that is stretchy enough to be comfortable and rigid enough to accurately sense data is difficult.

Machine learning can help make these devices more powerful, but in order to integrate the technology, stretchable hybrid wearables that combine comfort and stable data processing will need to be developed.

A paper published in Device on August 7 outlines how rigid integrated circuits layered on a flexible substrate can be used to improve wearable performance.

“Stretchable devices combining high-performance sensor integrated circuits based on solid-state electronics have been developed, but they lack the stretchability to accommodate large deformations of more than two times elongation. These factors have limited the development of integrated systems for stretchable devices and machine learning,” said Hiroki Ota, associate professor in the Faculty of Engineering at Yokohama National University.

In fact, Ota explained, there are no devices currently available on the market that can measure with both high accuracy and high repeatability among stretchable devices (or devices that have high deformability).

In this study, researchers focused on developing motion capture wearables with integrated machine learning. The devices were very deformable, meaning they were flexible and could contour to the body.

Structures called heterogeneous-rigidity protective structures were developed to provide the extra stability to the flexible wearables. These structures protected the electrical wiring and had three layers: a hard layer, an intermediate layer, and a soft layer.

The soft layer ensured the device remained stretchy and the harder layers maintained the integrity of the sensors in the device. Liquid metal paste was also used throughout the device, including to develop the wiring, to ensure the device remained flexible.

“The fusion of stretchable materials and solid-state electronics-based rigid elements realizes novel devices that combine elasticity with high computing and measurement capabilities. These devices promote integration with machine learning systems, where data reproducibility is critical,” said Ota.

To test the power of the wearable device, researchers performed three tasks: self-shape estimation of knots, recognizing writing in the air, and sign-language recognition. Researchers also tested how well the device continued to work as it was stretched.

When compared to previous iterations of wearable devices that only have a circuit board, the newly developed device with the heterogeneous-rigidity protective structure was better at handling elongation and stretching. The device with only the circuit board and soft layer showed strain at 30% elongation and it broke at 100% elongation.

In comparison, at 100% elongation the device with the heterogeneous-rigidity protective structure did not show any signs of damaging strain and it continued to work even if stretched to 150%.

The devices were also tested to see how well they performed at certain assigned tasks, including recognizing the letters spelled during finger spelling and sign-language recognition.

Currently, wearable devices used to track finger spelling have difficulty with parallel movements without finger bending. The newly developed heterogeneous-rigidity device was able to accurately classify between 91% and 98% of the letters spelled, depending on the processing model used to analyze the data, but additional research is needed to understand differences in the training models.

Researchers also posited that the technology could go beyond finger spelling and recognize American Sign Language, a highly sought-after technology. The challenges for developing this technology, however, go beyond the limitations of stretchable, wearable devices and additional development is needed.

Looking ahead, researchers plan to develop more devices with this new technology.

“Ultimately, we aim to realize stretchable hybrid electronics that integrate solid-state and stretchable electronics by utilizing the electronic properties of both rigid devices and elastic materials, and by integrating them with information processing technology,” said Ota.

Matt Riggs’ family has been farming in Urbana since 1874. But, his parents had to work second jobs to cushion themselves from the volatile corn and soybean markets that dominate Illinois’ agricultural sector.

In the past few years, Riggs has realized the land his family has worked for 150 years is also ideal for solar panels. It’s flat, well-drained and gets lots of sunlight.

As Illinois strives to convert 40% of its energy consumption to renewables by 2030 and 100% by 2050, solar installations are expected to increase by 1,700% over the next five years, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Across the country, approximately 83% of new solar projects developed by 2040 will be installed on farm and ranch land, according to a 2022 American Farmland Trust analysis.

But, broad, low-lying solar arrays are not inherently compatible with farming. They typically take land out of agricultural production. This doesn’t have to be the case, however. An emerging field called agrivoltaics suggests shorter, shade-tolerant crops may grow well in the small spaces between panels.

After installing solar panels at his brewery and seeing how reliable they were, Riggs wondered if he could use them to hedge his farm’s balance sheet.

“The sun is going to come up on average a certain amount of time so you can build a really stable, predictable financial model, which I looked at having grown up on a farm and was like ‘Wow, that’s awesome,'” said Riggs.

Some Google searches led him to agrivoltaics.

While there are very few agrivoltaic projects in Illinois, early research and small projects show synergies between solar energy and agriculture. The co-location of solar panels and agriculture could keep farmers in business, improve ecosystem health, feed the country and provide clean energy.

The vast majority of our portable electronic gadgets, and the new wave of electric transportation, are powered by lithium batteries. Texas-based startup Group1 has developed a more sustainable alternative, and has now launched the world’s first 18650 potassium-ion battery.

Group1 was co-founded in 2021 by battery tech veterans, including Leigang Xue who currently serves as Chief Product Officer but previously worked in the lab of 2019 Nobel Laureate and battery pioneer Dr. John Goodenough at University of Texas at Austin – who co-invented the Li-ion battery.

It was in this lab that Dr. Xue invented the company’s Potassium Prussian White (KBW) cathode material – which is reported to be the key development that enables production of the “safer, quickly charging, more efficient and sustainable” potassium-ion battery (KIB).

To make a KIB cell, KBW is paired with a commercial-grade graphite anode, along with readily available electrolyte formulations and separators – with the company also highlighting the distinct lack of critical minerals like lithium, cobalt, nickel and copper in the new batteries.

“As our transition away from fossil fuels accelerates, the demand for lithium-ion batteries is spiking quickly, and our lithium supplies will soon be incapable of meeting that demand,” said CEO Alexander Gira as the company came out of stealth in 2022. “Group1 and potassium-ion batteries can provide a viable alternative to bridge this supply gap.”

Group1 notes that potassium is more than a thousand times more abundant than lithium, and its KBW cathode is produced using low-temperature sustainable processes.

Development began small with a coin-cell battery, then progressed to a pouch-cell format and now the world’s first 18650 KIB has been unveiled. This format should mean relatively easy deployment to electric vehicle manufacturers, as well as potential use in power banks and portable gadgetry, for the promise of “the best combination of performance, safety, and cost when compared to LiFePO4 (LFP)-based Li-ion batteries and sodium-ion batteries.”

The new cells operate at 3.7 volts and are reported to have exceeded performance expectations, demonstrating “a practical path to achieve a gravimetric energy density of 160-180 Wh/kg.” Though this is up there with typical LFP packs currently in the wild, it still lags behind the next-gen CATL Shenxing Plus batteries – which top out at 205 Wh/kg. In a straight performance shootout, it’s even farther behind the lithium batteries in the lab as well as 4680 cells found in Tesla’s electric vehicles, for example.

Group1 has sent out samples to “key Tier 1 OEMs” and battery cell manufacturers, aiming for “widespread adoption of this transformative technology” in the very near future.

Lithium-ion batteries have a lot of advantages. They charge quickly, have a high energy density, and can be repeatedly charged and discharged.

They do have one significant shortcoming, however: they’re prone to short-circuiting. This occurs when a connection forms between the two electrodes inside the cell. A short circuit can result in a sudden loss of voltage or the rapid discharge of high current, both causing the battery to fail. In extreme cases, a short circuit can cause a cell to overheat, start on fire, or even explode.

A leading cause of short circuits are rough, tree-like crystal structures called dendrites that can form on the surface of one of the electrodes. When dendrites grow all the way across the cell and make contact with the other electrode, a short circuit can occur.

Using the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan (USask), researchers from the University of Alberta (UAlberta) have come up with a promising approach to prevent formation of dendrites in solid-state lithium-ion batteries. They found that adding a tin-rich layer between the electrode and the electrolyte helps spread the lithium around when it’s being deposited on the battery, creating a smooth surface that suppresses the formation of dendrites.

The results are published in the journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces. The team also found that the cell modified with the tin-rich structure can operate at a much higher current and withstand many more charging-discharging cycles than a regular cell.

Researcher Lingzi Sang, an assistant professor in UAlberta’s Faculty of Science (Chemistry), says the CLS played a key role in the research.

“The HXMA beamline enabled us to see at a material’s structural level what was happening on the surface of the lithium in an operating battery,” says Sang. “As a chemist, what I find the most intriguing is we were able to access the exact tin structure that we introduced to the interface which can suppress dendrites and fix this short-circuiting problem.”

In a related paper the team published earlier this year, they showed that adding a protective layer of tin also suppressed the formation of dendrites in liquid-electrolyte-based lithium-ion batteries.

This novel approach holds considerable potential for industrial applications, according to Sand. “Our next step is to try to find a sustainable, cost-effective approach to applying the protective layer in battery production,” adds Sang.