Chinese scientists have increased the energy density and battery life of lithium batteries by 2-3 times.

Recently, Chinese researchers have broken through the energy density and performance bottlenecks of conventional lithium-ion batteries, developing soft-pack cells with an energy density exceeding 600 watt-hours/kg and module batteries with a 480 watt-hours/kg capacity. These performance indicators directly improve the energy density and battery life of existing lithium-ion batteries by 2-3 times.

With the rapid development of emerging fields such as electric transportation, low-altitude economy, consumer electronics, and humanoid robots, the demand for high-energy, long-life rechargeable batteries is becoming increasingly urgent. Energy density is a core battery metric, and how to store more energy while reducing weight and size is a technical challenge that researchers around the world are striving to overcome.

Lithium metal batteries, with their significantly higher theoretical energy density than conventional lithium-ion batteries, are considered a next-generation battery technology that can address the performance bottlenecks and battery life of existing batteries. However, current electrolyte designs struggle to simultaneously meet the requirements for improved battery energy output and cycle life.

After years of innovative research and technical breakthroughs, a research team from Tianjin University and its collaborators have pioneered a "delocalized" design concept for high-energy lithium metal battery electrolytes. This concept breaks the traditional electrolyte design's reliance on a dominant solvation structure, achieving both improved energy density and overall performance. The research findings were published in the international academic journal Nature on August 13.

Hu Wenbin, professor at the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Tianjin University and the team leader, explained that through this innovation, the research team achieved the performance targets for the high-energy-density battery "Battery600" and successfully achieved scalability for the high-energy-density battery pack "Pack480," laying an important foundation for the future application of lithium metal batteries. Furthermore, the technology also exhibits excellent cycling stability and safety.

Currently, leveraging national platforms such as the Tianjin University National Energy Storage Technology Industry-Education Integration Innovation Platform and the National Key Laboratory of Precious Metal Functional Materials, the team is actively promoting the technical transformation and application verification of these findings. They have already established a pilot production line for high-energy lithium metal batteries, which have been successfully applied to three models of miniature all-electric unmanned aerial vehicles in my country, increasing the flight time by 2.8 times compared to existing batteries.

It is reported that the team has currently mastered the core technologies of the entire chain of high-energy lithium batteries, namely "materials-electrolyte-electrode-battery". All raw materials and key technologies are independently controllable, and the team has the ability to mass-produce with high consistency. It is expected to be fully put into production in the second half of this year.