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Sustainability and in situ monitoring in battery development

Nature Materials volume 16, pages 45–56 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

The development of improved rechargeable batteries represents a major technological challenge for this new century, as batteries constitute the limiting components in the shift from petrol (gasoline) powered to electric vehicles, while also enabling the use of more renewable energy on the grid. To minimize the ecological implications associated with their wider use, we must integrate sustainability of battery materials into our research endeavours, choosing chemistries that have a minimum footprint in nature and that are more readily recycled or integrated into a full circular economy. Sustainability and cost concerns require that we greatly increase the battery lifetime and consider second lives for batteries. As part of this, we must monitor the state of health of batteries continuously during operation to minimize their degradation. It is thus important to push the frontiers of operando techniques to monitor increasingly complex processes. In this Review, we will describe key advances in both more sustainable chemistries and operando techniques, along with some of the remaining challenges and possible solutions, as we personally perceive them.

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Figure 1: Elemental resources.
Figure 2: Schematics of different rechargeable batteries.
Figure 3: Trends towards sustainability for today's batteries.
Figure 4: Examples of operando techniques.
Figure 5: Possible future integration scenario for battery management.

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Acknowledgements

J.-M.T. acknowledges funding from the European Research Council (ERC) (FP/2014-2020)/ERC Grant-Project670116-ARPEMA. He thanks L. Zhang and D.A. Dalla Corte for help with drawing some of the figures and members of the RS2E for discussions. C.P.G. thanks the SUPERGEN Energy Storage Hub (EP/L019469/1) and the Northeastern Center for Chemical Energy Storage, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Award Number DE-SC0001294 for support.

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  1. Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Lensfield Road, CB2 1EW, Cambridge, UK

    C. P. Grey

  2. ALISTORE-European Research Institute, 80039, Amiens, France

    C. P. Grey & J. M. Tarascon

  3. Chimie du Solide-Energie, UMER 8260, Collège de France, 11 Place Marcelin Berthelot, 75231, Paris Cedex 05, France

    J. M. Tarascon

  4. Réseau sur le Stockage Electrochimique de l'Energie (RS2E), FR CNRS 3459, 80039, Amiens, France

    J. M. Tarascon

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Grey, C., Tarascon, J. Sustainability and in situ monitoring in battery development. Nature Mater 16, 45–56 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4777

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