Building better batteries from the nanoscale up

Researchers have moved a step closer to creating robust, three-dimensional microbatteries that would charge faster and hold other advantages over conventional lithium-ion batteries. They could power new generations of remote sensors, display screens, smart cards, flexible electronics and biomedical devices.

The batteries employ vertical arrays of nickel-tin nanowires perfectly encased in PMMA, a widely used polymer best known as Plexiglas. The laboratory found a way to reliably coat single nanowires with a smooth layer of a PMMA-based gel electrolyte that insulates the wires from the counter electrode while allowing ions to pass through.

"In a battery, you have two electrodes separated by a thick barrier," said a researcher. "The challenge is to bring everything into close proximity so this electrochemistry becomes much more efficient."

The team feel it has done that by growing forests of coated nanowires - millions of them on a fingernail-sized chip - for scalable microdevices with greater surface area than conventional thin-film batteries. "You can't simply scale the thickness of a thin-film battery, because the lithium-ion kinetics would become sluggish," he said.

"We wanted to work out how the proposed 3D designs of batteries can be built from the nanoscale up," said Sanketh Gowda, a graduate student in the lab.

"By increasing the height of the nanowires, we can increase the amount of energy stored while keeping the lithium-ion diffusion distance constant."

The researchers, led by Gowda and postdoctoral researcher Arava Leela Mohana Reddy, worked for more than a year to refine the process.

"To be fair, the 3D concept has been around for a while," Reddy said. "The breakthrough here is the ability to put a conformal coat of PMMA on a nanowire over long distances. Even a small break in the coating would destroy it." He said the same approach is being tested on nanowire systems with higher capacities.

The process builds on the lab's previous research to build coaxial nanowire cables. In the new work, the researchers grew 10-micron-long nanowires via electrodeposition in the pores of an anodised alumina template. They then widened the pores with a simple chemical etching technique and drop-coated PMMA onto the array to give the nanowires an even casing from top to bottom. A chemical wash removed the template.

They have built one-centimetre-square microbatteries that hold more energy and that charge faster than planar batteries of the same electrode length. "By going to 3D, we're able to deliver more energy in the same footprint," Gowda said.

They feel the PMMA coating will increase the number of times a battery can be charged by stabilising conditions between the nanowires and liquid electrolyte, which tend to break down over time.

The team is also studying how cycling affects nanowires that, like silicon electrodes, expand and contract as lithium-ions come and go. Electron microscope images of nanowires taken after many charge/discharge cycles showed no breaks in the PMMA casing - not even pinholes.

This led the researchers to believe the coating withstands the volume expansion in the electrode, which could increase the batteries' lifespans.