[Overview] By using iron and oxygen to drive the electrochemical reaction at the same time, the new battery has a lower cost and higher capacity. ã€å›¾æ³¨ã€‘ Lithium battery cells use oxygen and iron to store and release electrical energy. Christopher Wolverton's super lithium battery works theoretically. In a difficult task, the battery uses oxygen to drive the chemical reaction. Researchers used to think that this will cause the battery to become unstable. However, experiments have found that not only the battery can work properly, but also its performance is extremely high. The Northwestern University's Wolverton research team collaborated with researchers at Argonne National Laboratory to develop a rechargeable lithium-iron-oxide cell with more lithium-ion cycles than common lithium-cobalt-oxide cells. It can be made into a higher-capacity battery and can keep the smart phone and electric car on-board. "Our predictive calculation of this battery reaction is very promising, but if there is no experimental process to confirm, there will be many skeptics," said Wolverton, a professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering. "It actually started The effect of arrival is extremely significant." Lithium-ion batteries work by shuttle lithium ions back and forth between the anode and the cathode. When the battery is charged, the ions are moved back to the anode and stored there. The cathode is made of lithium ions, transition metals and oxygen compounds. When lithium ions move from the anode to the cathode and back, cobalt can efficiently store and release electrical energy, and the cathode capacity is then limited by the number of electrons in the transition metal involved in the reaction. "Traditionally, transition metals can react," Wolverton said. "Because each cobalt represents only one lithium ion, it has storage limits, and even worse, current batteries in cell phones or laptops are usually only used." Half of the cathode." Lithium-cobalt-oxide batteries have been on the market for 20 years, but researchers are looking for cheaper, higher-capacity alternatives. Wolverton's team used two strategies to improve the common lithium-cobalt-oxide battery: instead of cobalt, iron was used to force oxygen into the reaction process. If oxygen can also store and release electrical energy, the battery will have the ability to store and use lithium more efficiently. Although other research teams have tried this strategy in the past, very few people have achieved this. “The problem was often that if you tried to get oxygen to react, the compound would become unstable,†said Yao. “Oxygen will be released from the battery, making the reaction irreversible.†Through calculations, Wolverton and Yao discovered a reversible formula. First, they use iron instead of cobalt, which is extremely advantageous because it is one of the cheapest elements of the periodic table. Second, through calculations, they discovered the correct balance of lithium, iron, and oxygen ions so that oxygen and iron ions simultaneously drive the reversible reaction without allowing oxygen to escape. Wolverton said: "Not only will the battery have an interesting chemical reaction, because we get the electrons from metal and oxygen instead of iron. It's possible that better batteries will also be cheaper." More importantly, it's completely The rechargeable battery is driven by four lithium ions, and the current reaction can reversibly use one of these lithium ions, significantly exceeding the capacity of today's batteries. However, using iron and oxygen to drive the reaction makes all four cycles promising. Wolverton said: "Each metal contains four lithium ions - this will change all lithium batteries." This means that your phone can last eight times the life, or your car can continue to drive eight times if the electric car is in the range And the cost can compete with gasoline-powered cars and even exceed it, which will change the world energy market.