2025 New's Items

To address the growing demand for energy and support the shift toward transportation electrification and intermittent renewable energy, there is an urgent need for low-cost, energy-dense electrical storage. Research on Li-ion electrode materials has predominantly focused on ordered materials with well-defined lithium diffusion channels, limiting cathode design to resource-constrained Ni- and Co-based oxides and lower-energy polyanion compounds. Recently, disordered rocksalts with lithium excess (DRX) have demonstrated high capacity and energy density when lithium excess and/or local...

The development of solid-state batteries (SSBs) with lithium Li metal anodes holds significant promise for enhancing the energy density and safety of next-generation energy storage systems. However, their commercialization is hindered by challenges related to Li dendrite formation, which can lead to short circuits and battery failure. In this study, the role of Ag nanoparticles embedded within solid electrolytes (SE) is investigated in suppressing dendrite propagation. The results demonstrate that Ag nanoparticles effectively mitigate two key failure mechanisms: (1) dendrite growth...

Li-excess disordered rocksalts (DRXs) hold promise as next-generation cathodes for Li-ion batteries due to their high capacity and energy density, along with the potential to eliminate the need for Co and Ni. However, due to their low Li+ diffusivity, DRXs need to be pulverized into nanoparticles to achieve high performance. Herein, a new strategy for overcoming this limitation is demonstrated, involving the design of as-synthesized partially disordered oxides with a structure that lies between ordered layered and fully disordered, exhibiting a varying degree of local (dis)order. This...

The emergence of self-driving laboratories (SDLs) promises to innovate chemistry and materials science by incorporating autonomous systems for experimental design and execution. Advanced material characterization techniques, such as electron microscopy, are crucial for determining the materials synthesized by SDLs, and integrating these techniques into the SDL workflow is of paramount importance. Despite recent advancements, automated preparation of samples for electron microscopy remains challenging due to the specialized and hard-to-replicate human processes involved in powder...