If you run an electric car company and want to make your EVs more competitive, what
will you do?
Elon Musk is in that position, and one of the things he is doing is increasing
the driving range of Tesla cars.
Thanks to a wonder material, Musk has landed an EV
battery that will significantly boost his EVs' performance!
What is the new wonder material, and what are its properties?
Join us as we examine the new borophene battery just revealed by Elon Musk!
Batteries have become critical part of modern tech.
As unassuming as they are, batteries power many of the things around
you and let you operate them without always being connected to an electric outlet!
Think of a world where your smartphone has to
always be connected to a socket before you can use it.
That is no fun!
There are other more critical uses of batteries, like in heart
pacers.
Because of the important role batteries play in modern technology, scientists and
engineers are always looking for the best materials to use in batteries that will enhance
their properties like driving range, charging speeds, thermal conduction, safety, etc.
They also try to lower the cost so that electronic gadgets can become more affordable!
Elon Musk has reasons to be interested in batteries.
His dream is to help preserve the environment by replacing internal combustion
engine cars that produce greenhouse gases with zero-emission cars.
This dream, while laudable, hangs on the battery, which
stores electrical energy that is used to drive the electric motor.
The better the EV battery gets, the more people will switch to them.
Musk has also hinted he would like to develop an electric plane, which he would like to
use to replace his current private jet.
However, doing so needs a lighter battery that is
also high in energy density.
This will allow the plane to be as light as possible and have
a flying range of as long as possible.
With the current crop of batteries, it is difficult to
find one that meets the unique demands of aircraft.
Tesla has become a powerhouse in the battery industry as it designs its own batteries
and sometimes teams up with other companies to produce them.
However, the search is always on for the best battery materials!
Basically, all modern electric cars use the lithium ion battery, which Tesla actually
made popular with its first EV, the Roadster.
The battery has many advantages over the lead- acid, which was the favorite for many decades.
It is lighter, has higher energy density, doesn't require as much maintenance, charges
faster, lasts longer, etc.
However, the lithium ion battery still has some disadvantages when used in an electric
car.
It is still very heavy, making EVs weigh significantly more than their internal
combustion engine car counterparts.
The battery also doesn't charge fast enough, or
like ICEs can easily fill up with gas.
Also, they are very expensive to produce and even
to dispose of properly.
You have probably heard of a wonder material called graphene, which is touted to have
many promising applications that will transform many sectors, including electronics,
energy, health, and construction!
In the first few years of its existence or discovery,
scientists wrote more than 8,000 papers on the new material, showing the huge interest
it was generating.
Graphene is extracted from graphite, the material used in pencils.
Like graphite, graphene is entirely composed of carbon atoms,
and 1mm of graphite contains some 3 million layers of graphene.
Whereas graphite is a three-dimensional crystalline arrangement, graphene is a two-dimensional
crystal only an atom thick.
The carbons are perfectly distributed in a hexagonal honeycomb
formation only 0.3 nanometres thick, with just 0.1 nanometres between each
atom.
Graphene is expected to increase the electrical conductivity of battery electrodes, which
will improve their performance and mechanical stability.
It will also help bring down battery costs and improve the environmental
footprint.
However, there is a new wonder material in town that outshines graphene.
It is known as borophene and is receiving an enthusiastic
reception from material scientists and battery developers!
But what exactly is borophene?
This exciting material is two-dimensional atom-thin-sheets of boron, a chemical element
traditionally found in fiberglass insulation.
The interesting thing about boron is that while
in 3-D form, it is a non-metallic semiconductor.
But in 2-D form, it becomes a metallic conductor!
Borophene is extremely flexible, strong, and lightweight, even more so than graphene.
These unique electronic and mechanical properties make borophene a promising
material platform for next-generation electronic devices such as wearables, biomolecule
sensors, light detectors, and quantum computers.
The discovery of borophene is in many ways connected to graphene.
When the latter was discovered in 2004, scientists began to
search for other 2-D materials with remarkable properties because the chemical
bonds between carbon atoms that impart graphene with its strength make manipulating
its structure difficult.
Borophene is structurally similar to graphene, with a hexagonal network made of boron
instead of carbon atoms on each of the six vertices defining the hexagon.
Where they differ is that borophene periodically has
an extra boron atom in the center of the hexagon.
The crystal structure tends to be theoretically stable when about four out of
every five center positions are occupied and one is vacant.
According to theory, while the number of vacancies is fixed, their arrangement is not.
As long as the vacancies are distributed in a
way that maintains the most stable (lowest energy) structure, they can be rearranged.
Because of this flexibility, borophene can have multiple configurations.
Boron is next to carbon on the periodic table, having one less electron.
This made some scientists predict that boron that is deposited
on an appropriately chosen substrate could form a 2-D material similar to graphene.
However, nobody could experimentally validate the prediction until 2015, when scientists
synthesized borophene for the very first time.
They deposited boron onto silver substrates under ultrahigh-vacuum
conditions through molecular beam epitaxy.
Not long after that, another group of scientists grew borophene on silver, but they
proposed an entirely different crystal structure.
One of the beauties of borophene is that you can modify its structure to suit your
purpose, of which there are many.
Despite its promising nature, borophene is difficult to produce.
One of the main physical differences between graphene and borophene
is that while graphene can be peeled away from innately layered graphite using
something as simple as scotch tape, you cannot just peel away borophene from bulk
boron.
Instead, borophene must be grown directly onto a substrate.
And if you think growing one layer was complex, try growing multiple layers of
atomically flat borophene!
Because bulk boron is not layered like graphite, growing
boron beyond single atomic layers leads to clustering rather than planar films.
However, a team of Northwestern University engineers has managed to create a double
layer of atomically flat borophene.
This represents a huge step in making borophene becoming as commonplace as graphene, which
will accelerate its application.
The double-layered material created by the team maintained all of borophene's
desirable electronic properties while offering new advantages.
For example, the material comprises two atomic-layer-thick sheets bonded
together with space between, which could be used for energy or chemical storage.
Speaking of energy storage, what makes borophene so special in battery production?
If you are familiar with batteries, you will
realize that larger capacitance, good electrical conductivity, and ionic conductivity are the
key to whether a material can be used as electrode material.
As the 2D material, borophene has high surface liveness, which is
conducive to the realization of the super high storage capacity of metal material.
In addition, the metallic band construction of
borophene facilitates the conduction of electricity, so it can also be used as the
electrode for metal material ion batteries.
Because of the high surface activity of borophene, borophene as an electrode material
has a strong interaction with lithium ions.
The initial intercalation voltage is 1.12 eV,
which reduces with the increase of the Li adsorption range.
It wasn't long after the discovery of borophene that scientists proposed sodium
borohydride as an excellent cathode material for lithium batteries.
The fully lithiated phase of 2-Pmmn is much higher than traditional
graphite, silicene, phosphorene, and other electrode materials.
The relative migration potential barrier of lithium ions in
borophene is significantly smaller than that in graphite, silicene, and phosphorene.
So, basically, because borophene has high ionic
conductivity and excellent electronic conductivity, it has a relatively excellent
performance in the whole charging and discharging process.
Theoretically, borophene has a high capacity, excellent conductivity, and efficient ion
transport capacity, making it an excellent material for developing cathode materials
for lithium, sodium, and magnesium ion batteries.
Another type of battery where borophene might prove useful in the development of
lithium-sulfur batteries, which has suffered lots of setbacks.
Finding the correct anchor material to prevent the shuttle effect is
a problem.
Even graphene cannot work as the anchor material.
However, another group of scientists has explored the application of borophene
benzene as a potential anchoring material for lithium-sulfur batteries, using a first-
principles calculation method.
Let's hear what you think of borophene batteries in the comment section below