A new battery has been designed to quench the flammability potential of lithium-ion batteries while improving device durability and performance. Seawater serves in place of flammable and toxic electrolytes, and a new anode with improved durability prevents dendrite formation by use of a zinc-manganese nano-alloy.

This design proved stable across 1,000 hours of charging and discharging cycles under a high current density of 80 milliampere/cm² and showed no signs of degradation. Stability of the alloy was confirmed with Schematic illustration of zinc plating processes on zinc anode (top) and zinc-manganese anode (bottom). Source: Zhenxing Feng et al.synchrotron X-ray characterizations that tracked atomic and chemical changes of the anode in different stages of operation.

The researchers suggest that the seawater batteries could be used to power undersea vehicles, and the zinc-manganese alloy could be applied in both water and non-water-based batteries. The use of other metal alloys is now being studied for the design of dendrite-free, durable batteries in addition to zinc-manganese.

Scientists from the University of Central Florida, University of Houston, U.S. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Oregon State University and U.S. Argonne National Laboratory contributed to this research, which is published in Nature Communications.