Researchers at MIT and their colleagues are proposing a new design for electrodes that, based on the long-sought goal of using pure lithium metal as the anode, could lead to longer-lived batteries with higher energy densities. The new electrode concept comes from the laboratory of Ju Li, the Battelle Energy Alliance Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering and professor of materials science and engineering. It is described in a paper in the journal Nature, in a paper co-authored by Yuming Chen and Ziqiang Wang at MIT, along with 11 others at MIT and in Hong Kong, Florida, and Texas. The design is part of a concept for developing safe all-solid-state batteries, dispensing with the liquid or polymer gel usually used as the electrolyte material between the battery’s two electrodes. Although there has been a lot of work on solid-state batteries, with lithium metal electrodes and solid electrolytes, these efforts […]