Lithium News

Two teams of solar-power engineers, one led by a large group at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie GmbH, the other led by a group at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, has found two ways to improve the efficiency of solar cells by getting silicon and perovskite to work together better. Both teams have published papers in the journal Science outlining the details of their work and the results of their testing. Stefaan De Wolf and Erkan Aydin, with the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, have published a Perspectives piece in the same journal issue outlining the work done by both teams. Prior research has shown that due to silicon limitations, only a narrow part of the sunlight frequency band can be converted into electricity—this limits its theoretical efficiency to 29.4%. To get around this limit, solar engineers have tried adding other materials as a separate layer that can be used to convert light in other frequencies into electricity. One such material is perovskite—a crystal grown from a titanium and calcium mix. While it has shown promise, it has limited utility due to its tendency to allow some electrons to be reabsorbed into the crystal before they can be used to make electricity. In these two new efforts, both teams have found a way around this problem, each using a different approach. In the first effort, the engineers injected liquid piperazinium iodide into a layer of perovskite that had already been applied to a layer of silicon. Their technique proved to be 32.5% efficient during testing. In the second effort, the team developed a process that involved coating a layer of silicon with precursor chemicals and then adding a second chemical that set off a reaction that led to the formation of a perovskite coating. The result was a coating with reduced defects that allowed fewer electrons to wander back into the crystal. Testing showed the two-step process could be used to produce solar cells that were 31.2% efficient. Both teams acknowledge that their techniques were applied to solar cells much smaller than those used commercially; thus, a means for scaling them up is required before either could be used for traditional solar-cell applications.

Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, rechargeable batteries that can store energy via the reversible reduction of lithium ions, are among the most widespread battery technologies, due to their remarkable performance and extended life cycle. Many existing and emerging technologies are currently powered by these batteries, including smartphones, laptops and electric vehicles.

Despite their advantages, Li-ion batteries are becoming increasingly expensive, as they contain materials that are in high demand and difficult to source in large quantities, such as cobalt (Co) and nickel (Ni). Battery manufacturers and energy experts have thus been trying to identify alternative designs that require little or no cobalt and nickel, as they could reduce the costs of Li-ion batteries and facilitate their large-scale production.

Researchers at University of California Irvine, and other institutes across the United States recently introduced a new strategy to create cobalt-free cathodes for Li-ion batteries that do not adversely impact the batteries’ performance. Their study, featured in Nature Energy, was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Vehicle Technology Office.

“Our project started in 2018 and ended in March 2023,” Huolin Xin, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Tech Xplore. “When we began our research, the whole industry was working on ultrahigh-Ni cathode to replace or lower Co use. In 2019, the problem of Ni becoming the next pain point for the EV industry has already formed in my mind, because I found that the price of Ni had already increased to one third of Co’s price. During a project review meeting at the end of 2019, on behalf of my team, I made a few new year’s resolutions, one of which was to create a low-Ni, high-Mn, Co-free cathode to circumvent the Ni pain point.”

In 2020, Xin and his colleagues devised a new strategy to achieve zero-strain in a high-Ni (Ni-80%) cathode active material (CAM). Their strategy is based on so-called concentration complex doping, a technique to change the properties of materials using specific chemical substances (i.e., dopants).

“After this previous study was published in Nature, I told my team that we should try to apply this strategy to create a low-Ni CAM,” Xin explained. “Very successfully, we quickly showed that the concentration complex doping strategy can enable a commercially viable low-Ni, high-Mn CAM.

The concentration complex doping strategy proposed by Xin and his colleagues has several notable advantages. Via low cation mixing, it was found to enable a high capacity of 190 mAh/g at C/10 and a high specific energy of 700 wh/kg at C/3 in cathode materials, as well as a high thermal stability and long battery lifecycles.

“Our proposed strategy is low cost because it is cobalt-free, Ni content is reduced by 50%, and Mn, the main material we use, is cheap,” Xin said. “We demonstrated low cation mixing that unlocks high capacity (190 mAh/g at C/10) and high specific energy (700 wh/kg at C/3), a high thermal stability that outperforms that of NMC-532 and a long cycle life reaching >4000 cycles, which makes it competitive against LFP cells.”

In contrast with other proposed strategies to reduce the reliance of Li-ion batteries on Co and Ni, the approach introduced by Xin and his colleagues does not require the coating of the materials’ surface. This makes it easier to implement on a large-scale.

In initial tests, Co-free cathodes created using the team’s strategy performed remarkably well, enabling the fabrication of stable and efficient Li-ion batteries with long lifecycles. In the future, it could be used to create more affordable Li-ion batteries for a wide range of applications, while also potentially inspiring the introduction of similar doping-based approaches to create cobalt-free batteries.

“We are now working on next-gen CAMs that have even lower-Ni/Co content which will again lower the cost of CAM materials,” Xin added.

A huge phosphate rock deposit discovered in Norway contains enough minerals to meet the global demand for batteries and solar panels for the next 100 years, according to the mining company that controls it.

Norge Mining said up to 70 billion tonnes of the non-renewable resource may have been uncovered in south-western Norway, alongside deposits of other strategic minerals like titanium and vanadium.

Phosphate rock contains high concentrates of phosphorus, which is a key component for building green technologies but currently faces significant supply issues.

Phosphorus was first discovered in 1669 by German scientist Hennig Brandt, who was searching for the philosopher’s stone. While it proved ineffective in turning ordinary metals into gold, it has become an essential component in lithium-iron phosphate batteries in electric cars, as well as for solar panels and computer chips.

Russia previously controlled the world’s largest ultra-pure phosphate rock deposits, with the European Union warning that these “critical raw materials” have a high supply risk.

The EU is currently almost entirely dependent on imports of phosphate rock from the rest of the world, according to a report from The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, with China, Iraq and Syria also home to large deposits.

The report, which was published before the discovery of the massive Norwegian deposit, warned that the EU should be “concerned about phosphate rock shortages”.

An article in the scientific journal Nature last year warned of imminent supply disruptions of phosphorus, citing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent economic sanctions as a potential cause of market volatility.

The global economy consumes an estimated 50 million tonnes of phosphorus each year, with scientists warning earlier this year that the planet could face a “phosphogeddon” if supply trends continue.

“The buyers’ market is becoming increasingly crowded by limited trade – due to political instability in several source countries, as well as international sanctions imposed on others,” Norge Mining noted in a June blog post. “This is forcing importers to fear an impending crisis.”

Norway’s minister of trade and industry, Jan Christian Vestre, said last month that the government was considering fast-tracking a giant mine in Helleland once analysis is completed on 47 miles of drill cores. If approval is given, the first major mine could begin operation by 2028.

The politician said Norway’s “obligation” was to develop “the world’s most sustainable mineral industry” following the discovery of the minerals.

The mining plans already have the support of the European Raw Materials Alliance, according to local reports, while local consultations continue.

A spokesperson for the European Commission described the discovery as “great news” for meeting the objectives of the Commission’s raw material objectives, with Norge Mining telling Euractiv that the projected 4,500-metre-deep ore body would theoretically be capable of meeting global demand for the next century.

Fluidized beds are used in a variety of industries and play an important role in the transition to green energy and the production of food and drugs. However, the process that occurs inside a fluidized bed is extremely complex and—due to lack of effective measurement techniques—has remained largely unknown. Now, researchers from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have developed a high-frequency radar technique that can measure exactly what is happening inside a fluidized bed with unrivaled precision. This breakthrough could lead to completely new and more efficient processes in several industries, including energy conversion. The work is published in the journal Fuel. Fluidized bed combustion is one of the leading technologies used in the world’s thermal power plants. This technology converts solid fuels, such as biomass and waste, into district heating and electricity. Fluidization technology is also fundamental to many other processes that are expected to play an important role globally in the transition of energy systems, and in circular resource flows—such as in carbon capture, energy storage and the production of hydrogen and other fossil-free fuels. Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have now developed a radar technique able to provide a detailed characterization of the flow of solids in fluidized beds, the lack of which has been holding back the development of these processes. Fluidized beds are already the most effective technology for converting solid biofuels into energy. This technology results in an efficient and consistent rate of combustion because the solid particles assume a liquid-like state which helps to distribute the heat homogeneously in the combustion chamber. In brief, fluidization technology is based on a gas being blown through a bed of small sand-like particles in a reactor, so that these solid particles, the fuel and the gas, become thoroughly mixed.

Like a sandstorm and a wildfire in one

In order to achieve even greater efficiencies in this process, you need to be able to understand and control how the solid particles behave in the mixture. But the reactor environment is often hot, dirty and corrosive—like a sandstorm and a wildfire in one—effectively preventing any type of measurement and thus limiting our understanding of what is actually happening inside the reactor. The Chalmers researchers’ new solution to this problem is an extremely high-frequency radar technique that can measure the flows of solid particles in fluidized beds with unrivaled precision. Inspired by the pulse-Doppler radar used to track weather phenomena such as rain or snow, this is the first time the technique has been demonstrated in the context of a fluidized bed. This breakthrough is now expected to pave the way for new and more efficient processes in a number of industries. “The use of the high-frequency terahertz radar instrument demonstrated in our study has the potential to revolutionize how fluidized bed technology can be designed and used in many different industrial sectors—from energy conversion to the food industry and drug production. This is one of very few demonstrations of the use of pulse-Doppler radar technique at submillimeter wave frequencies, and it is the first time ever that it has been used for making measurements in a fluidized bed,” says Diana Carolina Guío Pérez, researcher in energy technology at Chalmers.

Unrivaled measurement accuracy

While the measurement techniques used in fluidized beds are normally low-resolution, produce results that are difficult to interpret, or cause disturbances in the flow, the Chalmers researchers’ high-frequency terahertz radar technique can penetrate the reactor from the outside and measure the behavior of the particles inside it without disturbing the flow. The radar technique can also measure the velocity and concentration of the solid particles simultaneously with great precision and high resolution in time and space. This means that even minimal changes in the flow can be detected in real-time, which is important when monitoring and controlling industrial processes. In the researchers’ study, the technique was demonstrated in practice, for the first time ever, in a three-meter high circulating fluidized bed boiler. Their findings showed a measurement quality that exceeded the quality achieved by the methods previously used in the field by a big margin. “We have been able to show that pulse-Doppler radar technique at frequencies up to 340 GHz can measure both the distribution of particles and their velocity inside a process reactor at a much higher resolution than other technologies can. This is information that has long been lacking in the field and will make it possible to improve and scale up process reactors and—in the case of energy conversion—reduce emissions of unwanted residual products,” says Marlene Bonmann, post-doc at the Terahertz and Millimeter Wave Laboratory at Chalmers University of Technology. “The knowledge that can be acquired with our high-frequency terahertz radar technique has the potential to break new ground in our understanding of solids flows in fluidized bed reactors and other solids handling units. For example, it can lead to improved operation and design of the reactors needed in existing and completely new fluidized bed-based conversion processes, such as carbon capture and storage, energy storage and thermal cycling,” says Diana Carolina Guío Pérez.

Argentina’s first plant for lithium batteries will begin operations in September, using metal extracted locally by US company Livent Corp, mining officials said on Saturday.

Livent had agreed earlier this year to supply lithium to the new plant, which was developed by Y-TEC, a unit of Argentine state oil firm YPF.

“We will start to produce the first lithium-ion battery cells in the country,” said Roberto Salvarezza, president of Y-TEC, in a government statement, noting that the batteries will use lithium carbonate extracted by Livent in northern Argentina.

Argentina is the world’s fourth largest producer of lithium and has been attracting investment. Along with Chile and Bolivia, the country is in South America’s so-called ‘lithium triangle’, which holds the world’s largest trove of the ultra-light metal, highly coveted for its use in batteries.

Argentina’s mining minister Fernanda Avila said she hoped it would be an example for future projects.

“The development of the supply around mining activity is a priority for our government,” she said.