Categories
The aluminium oxide (al) is one of the most abundant metals in nature.
Its value is as an electrode material and as an electrolyte, it forms a major part of a battery.
The oxide is used in a variety of applications from electrodes for batteries to electrolytes for electronics.
Its use has long been the subject of debate, however, as many experts believe that the metal has no significant practical uses for the production of lithium ion battery electrodes.
A group of researchers, led by Professor David Burdick from the University of Melbourne, has now demonstrated that the oxide can be used as an anode material and has shown that it can also serve as anode for lithium ion electrodes.
Professor Burdack and his colleagues found that using a silver anode with a lithium ion electrode, they were able to generate a very strong lithium ion current that could be maintained over time.
The result is that the aluminium oxide is a suitable anode and is capable of providing a wide range of electrical properties, including resistance, heat transfer, electrochemical conductivity, and electrochemical stability.
The researchers are now working on the development of an improved aluminium oxide electrode that will enable them to further increase its practicality.
The aluminium is an alloy of copper, zinc and tin.
Its composition is also influenced by the presence of oxygen and the presence the element lithium.
In a paper published in the journal Science Advances, Professor Burden and his team demonstrated that aluminium oxide can act as an excellent anode, with a specific electrical conductivity of between 0.1 and 1.0 keV/cm2, which is in line with that of nickel.
They used the new aluminium oxide anode to study a variety (more than 200) of electrode materials for lithium-ion batteries.
Professor David R. Burdicker, University of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia Professor Bredick and his group are the first to demonstrate that aluminium anodes can provide electrical properties that are as good or better than those of nickel anodes in the electrodes for lithium Ion batteries.
Aluminium oxide can also provide better conductivity than other electrodes due to its higher conductivity.
Alumina has been used in batteries since the 1940s, with the current generation of lithium Ion cells being based on this material.
Professor Stephen D. Williams, University College London, UK Professor Bunkers research group is led by Prof David Burden from the Department of Chemistry at the University, Melbourne.
He is also the senior author of the study, which was published in Science Advance.
Professor Williams and his research group have been investigating the use of aluminium oxide as anodizing metal electrodes for the past few years, in an effort to develop better electrodes.
Alums research group has identified a number of promising new anodes, and their work has led to the development and application of a range of electrode material materials.
Aluminosilicate, which Professor Williams is currently developing, is a new type of aluminium that is more stable, conductive and conducts at higher voltages.
However, the researchers have not been able to test this material in an experiment, as its properties are still not well understood.
Professor James F. Wigand from the UK’s Royal Society of Chemistry, UK, has been leading the aluminium oxidation research for many years.
He has published many papers on aluminium oxide and has worked on several different applications, including the use in anodes for high voltage batteries.
Prof Wigany, who is also a senior author on the paper, says the work by Burdicks group has the potential to improve the future performance of lithium- ion batteries.
“The research is important, and we will be looking at other anodes to understand better how they might work, and also to better understand the properties of the electrodes themselves,” he says.
Professor R. L. A. Koehler, University Of California, Davis, USA Professor Koehl has been involved in the research for a number years, first at the Advanced Energy Materials Laboratory (AEML) at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), and then at the Berkeley Lab Advanced Materials Center (AMSEC).
The group is a collaborative effort between the Berkeley lab, Berkeley Lab, and AEML, which includes scientists from the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), University of California Berkeley, and Caltech.
The work is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Office of Naval Research (ONR), and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
The research was carried out at Berkeley Lab using material from an alloy known as Aluminium-Oxygen (AlO2) with Alumine (A2O), which is a precursor for aluminum.
AEMl’s Advanced Materials Research Center (AMPRC) is also involved in this work, which involves the creation of a large-scale aluminium oxide cathode with the assistance of other researchers from the Berkeley Laboratory.
