Laying the foundation for longer battery life 'super battery'

With the popularization of new energy electric vehicles, the cruising range has become one of the problems hindering the development of electric vehicles. How to make a 'super battery' that has a long cruising range, a large number of cycles, and is safe enough? At this year’s Shanghai Science and Technology Awards Conference, with the project “Structural Regulation and Electrochemical Behavior of Carbon-Rich Nano-Energy Storage Materials”, Junhe Yang’s team won the Shanghai Natural Science First Prize for the design and development of high-efficiency energy storage devices. Preparation provides theoretical support. Professor Yang Junhe, Dean of the School of Materials Science and Engineering of the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, told reporters that in the past 30 years, scientific research breakthroughs in new carbon materials such as carbon nanotubes, fullerenes, and graphene have continuously made relevant scientists Won the Nobel Prize, the research of new carbon materials has become a hot frontier scientific research field. What is the relationship between carbon materials and batteries? It turns out that carbon materials are key materials for electrochemical energy storage devices. From the earliest dry batteries to the rapidly developing lithium-ion batteries, supercapacitors and other new energy storage devices, carbon is used as one of its key materials. The reason for this is that the structure of carbon materials is diversified, suitable for multi-scale precision control, and has the advantages of high conductivity and high specific surface. In order to find suitable energy storage materials, the Shanghai Science and Technology team began research on carbon-rich nano-energy storage materials. Due to the diverse structure of carbon-rich materials, it is difficult to precisely control and directional synthesis, which brings challenges to research and development. When designing and regulating carbon-rich materials, several core issues need to be solved: how to extend the battery's cruising range, increase the number of cycles of the battery, and enhance the safety of the battery? In order to solve these core problems of energy storage materials, Professor Yang Junhe led the team to tackle key problems and made a lot of progress. For example, in the electrode material of an electrochemical battery, a certain 'hole' is required to allow ions to pass through during charging. Should these holes be large or small, round or square? How are the holes distributed in an orderly and scaled manner? In this regard, Yang Junhe's team proposed a π-π conjugate induction and atom doping strategy. In addition, the team also clarified the basic laws of pore structure and surface chemistry on sulfur stabilization, and developed synthetic strategies based on nano-domain and chemical bonding. This solves the key problems of poor conductivity of sulfur and the dissolution of polysulfides in the electrolyte, and opens up a new way for high-performance and safe lithium-sulfur batteries. The team proposed a new idea of u200bu200bdimensional matching and compounding of carbon and active components and a performance optimization strategy to prepare battery anode materials with excellent performance. As a result, they provided a complete set of theories for the preparation of new carbon-rich nanocomposite energy storage materials, and promoted the application research of such materials in the field of energy storage batteries and supercapacitors and the development of related disciplines. From the beginning, we started thinking about industrialization. 'From the beginning of the research, we thought about the theoretical issues from the direction of large-scale preparation that can be industrialized, so that the basic scientific research results can be truly applied.' The reporter noted that the project research results are not only published 100%. In addition to many high-level academic papers, he has also obtained 28 Chinese invention patents and 3 international patents. A basic research result, why are there so many authorized patents? Yang Junhe said that while doing basic scientific research, the team has never forgotten that the goal is to promote the development of the battery industry. In order to solve common problems in the industry, they have made a series of technological innovation breakthroughs while tackling basic research and scientific research. These patents will also become related technologies in the field of battery manufacturing. At present, related projects are promoting industrialization. The team has cooperated with domestic and foreign companies such as China Xinlun Technology. Some of the core technologies are also the first batch of projects to be settled in Shanghai's graphene technology industry platform. It is understood that a batch of graphene-based battery materials are in the pilot test stage. These materials will be used in supercapacitors, lithium-sulfur batteries, and in all aspects of industry and life. Lithium-sulfur batteries have become the focus of the development of a new generation of power sources. Lithium-sulfur batteries will replace lithium-ion batteries in the future. This is a common consensus in China. The research results of Shanghai Polytechnic are expected to solve the problem of battery materials and further promote the industrialization of domestic lithium-sulfur batteries and supercapacitors. It is worth mentioning that this is also a major progress made by our scientific research team in basic theoretical research.