The new solid state lithium metal battery can be recharged for more than 10000 cycles in 3 minutes

At present, the startup Adden Energy has announced that it has obtained the exclusive technology license granted by the Technology Development Office of Harvard University to promote the commercialization of this technology. Its goal is to reduce the battery to a “soft battery” the size of a palm, and its components are encapsulated in an aluminum coated film.
This battery uses lithium in the form of pure metal instead of lithium ion used in electric vehicle batteries on the market. Meanwhile, “solid state” refers to the use of solid electrodes and solid electrolytes, rather than liquid or polymer gel electrolytes in lithium-ion batteries.
In the laboratory, the team’s battery prototype achieved a charging speed as fast as 3 minutes, and can be recycled more than 10000 times in the life cycle. The researchers said that at present, even the best batteries in the same category only have 2000-3000 charging cycles, and this technology may “change the rules of the game”.
This new battery’s novel and complex design is inspired by the classic British sandwich. Compared with traditional lithium-ion batteries, lithium metal batteries store much more energy in the same volume, while the charging time is much less than traditional lithium-ion batteries. But they can easily form “dendrites” – tiny, rigid dendrites. Dendrite will grow in the battery, and the part of its needle like protrusion is called dendrite. These structures grow into the electrolyte like roots and pierce the barrier separating the anode and cathode, which may cause the battery to catch fire.
The sandwich like multilayer structure can prevent the formation of dendrite structure. If you think of the battery as a sandwich, the first layer is bread (lithium metal anode), then lettuce (graphite coating), then a layer of tomatoes (the first electrolyte) and a layer of bacon (the second electrolyte), and finally another layer of tomatoes and the last piece of dough (cathode). In this design, the dendrites grow in “lettuce” and “tomato”, but stop at “bacon”. The “Bacon” barrier prevents the dendrite from passing through and shorting the battery, thus preventing the occurrence of faults.
In addition, the battery is self repairing, which means that its chemical composition allows it to backfill holes generated by dendrites.
The startup said that the rapid development of clean energy storage technology is crucial to tackling climate change. It is estimated that the global car electrification alone can reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 16%, and this “new battery mode” is regarded as the key to achieving this goal.