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Batteries: Polymers switch for safety

Nature Energy volume 1, Article number: 15018 (2016) Cite this article

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Ensuring safety during operation is a major issue in the development of lithium-ion batteries. Coating the electrode current collector with thermoresponsive polymer composites is now shown to rapidly shut the battery down when it overheats, and to quickly resume its function when normal operating conditions return.

Reliable and high-performance energy storage systems are imperative for the widespread deployment of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind energy1,2. Battery technologies such as lithium-ion and lithium-metal batteries are thus attracting increasing interest because of their high energy density (the energy stored per unit mass or volume). As the energy density increases, safety concerns due to potential fire hazards arise, especially in large-scale applications where thousands of batteries are connected together. Writing in Nature Energy, Zhenan Bao, Yi Cui and colleagues from Stanford University now report a simple yet effective solution to mitigate the safety problems for batteries that relies on the coating of polymeric films on the electrode current collectors3.

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Figure 1: Battery with thermoresponsive polymer switching materials (TRPS).

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  1. Khalil Amine is at Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 South Cass Avenue, Argonne, Illinois 60439-4837, USA.,

    Khalil Amine

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  1. Khalil Amine
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Correspondence to Khalil Amine.

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Amine, K. Batteries: Polymers switch for safety. Nat Energy 1, 15018 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nenergy.2015.18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nenergy.2015.18

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