DOE, Stanford researchers bring "dead" lithium batteries back to life by changing the way li-ion batteries are cycled.
The lithium-ion batteries found in most modern EVs and hybrids tend to lose energy capacity as they cycle (get charged, get spent, and get re-charged). That happens because small bits of lithium can be cut off from the battery's electrodes during the charging process. But, a team of DOE and Stanford scientists say they've been able to make this "dead" li-ion reconnect, partially reversing the unwanted loss of energy capacity and extending lithium battery life by 30%. "I always thought of isolated lithium as bad, since it causes batteries to decay and even catch on fire," said Yi Cui, a professor at Stanford and SLAC and investigator with the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Research (SIMES), in an interview with Science Daily. Cui, who led the research into reversing lithium-ion battery decay along with scientists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, explained, "[W]e have discovered how to electrically reconnect this 'dead' lithium with the negative electrode to reactivate it." I'll include a very basic, possibly oversimplified primer here for the nonengineers: li-ion batteries contain positively charged bits of lithium (the ions) that shuttle back and forth between the battery's cathodes and anodes. That movement is what carries electrons…