With the h/t to Reynolds: lithium plating. Apparently there's a sort of lithium powercell as isn't an -ion -cell; it's metallic, and this holds more power. I admit surprise that Reynolds got to this before Pixy Misa did; Pixy's been on batteries a lot lately.
You could get the metal onto the electrode by the usual electroplating. And we'd heard earlier that lithium might not be as rare as we'd feared. But.
More energy means, potentially, more boom boom if released off-schedule. And it gets worse. Remember lithium metal in the chem lab? Yeah, apparently it will corrode in a powercell too. So not only do we get a worse boom if something goes wrong but the likelihood of wrong is increased.
Adam Schrader relates that UCLA is now able to plate an electrode fast enough that the corrosion won't hit in time. Then I guess they can gate the metal so it corrodes only when the powercell's current is called-upon. UCLA incidentally report that a pure lithium crystal, now they can see it, is dodecahedrous.
Can we do this for sodium? Also, would lithium-metal cathodes require similar anode upgrades?
No comments:
Post a Comment