The same process that creates the tails of comets also may hold the key to a less expensive process to make long-lasting batteries. 

Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), in a recently published paper, have shown that vapor from lithium oxide (Li2O) created via sublimation – going straight to a gas from a solid state – accelerates a chemical reaction that forms single crystals when mixed with nickel-rich precursors. Single-crystal battery materials are thought to help batteries last longer. 

There have been efforts to determine how to cost-effectively incorporate even more nickel into lithium-ion batteries, as nickel can store more energy and potentially reduce costs, according to a release. Nickel can degrade the battery and shorten its lifetime due to the formation of crystal agglomerations. 

While experimenting with lithium oxide, the PNNL team discovered something surprising:  combining a nickel-rich precursor with lithium oxide at temperatures around 900 degrees Celsius yields single-crystal cathode material readily formed. The researchers then worked with industry partner Thermo Fisher Scientific to identify that sublimation was the phenomenon behind the discovery. 

The resulting time and energy savings, plus the high performance of lithium oxide-derived single crystals, provides a new way to manufacture high performing battery materials. 

The PNNL researchers who were among the paper's authors are Bingbin Wu, Ran Yi, Yaobin Xu, Peiyuan Gao, Yujing Bi, Jing Wu, Dianying Liu, Xia Cao & Jie Xiao.