“Self-stacking lithium” Korean researchers eliminate EV explosion risks with a new electrode design
Pohang University of Science & Technology (POSTECH)
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Morphology and schematic illustration of different hosts along with pouch-type battery performance based on low-tortuosity host
view moreCredit: POSTECH
According to the International Council on Clean Transportation, as of early 2024, there are approximately 40 million electric vehicles (EVs) in operation worldwide. Among them, verified battery-related fires in light-duty EVs number just over 500 between 2010 and mid-2023, corresponding to a fire risk of roughly 1 in 100,000 vehicles. While this rate is substantially lower than that for internal-combustion-engine vehicles, EV battery fires remain a major concern because once thermal runaway occurs and a fire ignites, they can be extremely difficult to extinguish and may reignite.
A research team from POSTECH (Professor Soojin Park, Dr. Dong-Yeob Han, Ms. Gayoung Lee) and Chung-Ang University (Professor Janghyuk Moon, Mr. Seongsoo Park) has developed a novel three-dimensional porous structure that significantly improves both the lifespan and safety of lithium-metal batteries (LMBs). Their work was published in Advanced Materials.
Lithium metal batteries promise much higher energy density than today’s lithium-ion batteries and could dramatically extend EV driving range. However, the main barrier to commercialization has been the tendency of lithium metal to deposit unevenly during charging and discharging, forming needle-like “dendrites” that can pierce separators and cause internal short-circuits or even explosions.
The team’s solution is simple yet effective: they engineered a porous host structure with straight, low-tortuosity channels and a built-in lithiophilicity gradient enabling uniform lithium deposition from the bottom up. Think of a parking garage: if the entrance is narrow and lanes are winding, cars tend to bunch at the entrance. But if you build wide straight ramps and make lower floors more spacious, vehicles naturally fill the lower floors first. Their electrode design applies this principle to lithium ions in the battery.
Using a nonsolvent-induced phase separation (NIPS) process, they created the porous host by mixing a polymer matrix with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and silver (Ag) nanoparticles to enhance electrical conductivity, while introducing an Ag layer on a copper substrate to induce lithium nucleation at the base. As a result, bottom-up lithium deposition with fully suppressed dendrite growth and greatly improved structural stability.
In tests, batteries built with this host achieved an energy density of 398.1 Wh/kg and 1,516.8 Wh/L, far exceeding typical lithium-ion batteries (~250 Wh/kg, ~650 Wh/L). Even under commercial-level conditions with low electrolyte content, a thin lithium anode, and real-world cathodes such as NCM811 and LFP, they demonstrated outstanding stability without short circuits or capacity collapse. If applied to EVs, this improvement could potentially extend driving range by roughly 60–70% (for example, a vehicle that currently travels ~400 km per charge might reach ~650–700 km).
Professor Park stated, “This research presents a new way to simultaneously control ion transport pathways and lithium growth behaviour inside electrodes, without relying on complex manufacturing processes. Designing both the ‘path’ and the ‘direction’ of lithium movement will be a turning point in advancing toward the commercialization of safe, high-energy lithium-metal batteries.” Professor Moon added, “Our process allows simultaneous control of microstructure and chemical gradients through a simple fabrication route, making it highly scalable for industrial production.”
This research was supported by the Ministry of Science and ICT (Republic of Korea).
Journal
Advanced Materials
Article Title
Regulating Polymer Demixing Dynamics to Construct a Low-Tortuosity Host for Stable High-Energy-Density Lithium Metal Batteries
Article Publication Date
23-Oct-2025
Light it up: Battery particles tell the true story of a battery's charge
Purdue University
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This difference map shows the optical properties of lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide particles in a coin-cell battery (brighter particles indicate a higher charged state). By capturing this brightness data over time, researchers can use statistical analysis to build a clear mathematical model of the battery's heterogeneity.
view moreCredit: Purdue University/Kejie Zhao research group
Lithium-ion batteries power our phones, cars, and even homes; ensuring their safe and efficient behavior has become incredibly important. Using a simple optical technique, Purdue University researchers have observed a battery's individual particles lighting up as they charge - enabling a more complete picture of the battery's overall health and performance.
“Lithium-ion batteries — in fact, all batteries — function because of millions of chemical interactions happening at the particle level,” said Kejie Zhao, professor of mechanical engineering. “Characterizing them becomes a mechanical and electrochemical problem.”
In Zhao’s lab, they use many tools to bridge this gap between mechanics and electrochemistry to create better batteries. One of these tools is a simple RGB camera.
“It’s only been recently discovered that individual particles in a battery’s electrode actually appear brighter as they charge,” Zhao said. “Our breakthrough is that we look at hundreds of particles at a time, and can use their brightness levels to determine how evenly the charge is distributed through the electrode.”
This research has been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The experiment began with a lithium-ion coin cell battery in a glove box filled with inert gas (lithium is volatile when exposed to the open air). Zhao's team focused a simple optical microscope onto a group of 100 to 1,000 individual particles. They slowly charged the battery and recorded time-lapse video of the same group of particles over several hours. By analyzing the brightness level of these individual particles, they could reconstruct an extremely precise spatial model of how evenly the battery is charged.
“The amazing part about this process is that you don’t need high-powered tools — just a simple optical microscope and camera,” Zhao said. “It doesn’t even need to be in focus; the brightness levels consistently deliver accurate data either way.”
With image processing and data analysis, the team extracted valuable data about the construction and operation of these batteries. “Right now, the only way to quality control for a battery’s particles is to examine them in the factory,” Zhao said. “But by observing optically how they charge over time, we get a more accurate picture. We’ve established that there is a direct mathematical correlation between the optical brightness of particles and the overall state of charge of the battery.”
And that’s important, because a battery’s charging and discharging behavior relies on its heterogeneity, or how evenly distributed particles are throughout the electrode. If charge is concentrated in one place, the battery is more likely to degrade, fail, or even burn catastrophically. “Even at the particle level, clusters of charge can lead to local defects, which can lead to degraded performance and eventually thermal runaway,” Zhao said.
While Zhao’s experiments focused specifically on lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxides (NMC), he said that this optical process has been proven to work for many electrode materials — lithium cobalt oxide, graphite, and others — because of the change of electrical conductivity upon charging and discharging. In other words, this characterization process can be used for any type of battery formulation in the future.
“Batteries have always been difficult to diagnose,” he said. “Seeing them behave like this, in an active charging or discharging state, offers so much more information than analyzing them in a static state. We’ve proven the theoretical foundation, and now we can use optical microscopes with confidence to analyze today’s batteries and establish the science for future battery technologies.”
This research is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under award number DE-SC0024064; and by the National Science Foundation under award number CBET-2349666.
Battery particles lit up while charging [VIDEO]
The individual metal-oxide particles of a lithium-ion battery become visibly brighter as they charge. By analyzing the patterns of how these particle groups become brighter, researchers can extrapolate the behavior of an entire battery.
Credit
Purdue University/Kejie Zhao research group
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Article Title
On the Scale of Heterogeneity in Composite Electrodes of Batteries
Article Publication Date
23-Oct-2025
FF-GFM enables a less-dynamic, safer renewable power system
Tsinghua University Press
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The proposed frequency-fixed grid-forming control strategy controls CIGs as constant voltage sources within their capability limitations and can realize a renewable power system with fixed frequency and robust stability. Meanwhile, secondary active power control, which is much slower, is proposed for intentional power flow adjustments.
view moreCredit: iEnergy
“Power systems are regarded as the most complex man-made systems. This complexity can be attributed to the substantial number of buses within the system and the numerous rapidly changing, highly nonlinear dynamics of the CIGs. However, this is not an advantage; rather, it is the fundamental cause of system instability. Given the artificial nature of the system, it would seem advisable to conduct a simpler system. How can we reduce complexity and enhance system safety and reliability? A fundamental approach involves decoupling and reducing system order. For instance, DC asynchronous interconnection employs the flexible controllability of power electronics to isolate grid dynamics.” says Prof. Yong Min, a researcher at the State Key Laboratory of Power System Operation and Control at Tsinghua University.
They published their study on 27 October, 2025, in iEnergy.
A novel concept to design the GFM
In the study, the research group proposed a novel concept for the design of grid-forming (GFM) control. A GFM converter should, within its capability limits, strive to control itself as a constant voltage source without introducing control dynamics. Regulation should only be performed to ensure device safety when the capability limits are exceeded. This control approach can significantly reduce the dynamics within the system and the dynamic interactions among devices, thereby enhancing the system’s safety. “The dynamics of SGs leads to both rotor angle stability issues and frequency stability issues. However, they are dominated by physical processes and can hardly be reduced. The dynamics of CIGs are dominated by control processes and can be reduced with proper control strategies. The prevailing approaches for emulating SGs inherit these stability issues and introduce additional new converter-driven stability issues. Thus, we believe these strategies are not suited for future CIG-dominated systems.” says Zhenyu Lei, a Ph.D candidate specializing in power system dynamics.
Transforming the power system from a complex dynamic system into a static system.
Following the idea to controlling CIGs as constant voltage sources, a corresponding GFM control strategy, named FF-GFM control, is proposed. With the proposed strategy, the system's frequency and synchronization dynamics are significantly reduced, to the point where it becomes a static system. The system frequency is almost always fixed at its rated value. Only static safety issues determined by the power-flow equations exist; no stability issues related to dynamic processes are present. Moreover, it should be noted that the CIGs equipped with the proposed control strategy are compatible with existing power sources, such as SGs and grid-following CIGs, which is crucial for the gradual implementation of the proposed framework within existing power systems. “It is our contention that our work offers a superior solution for 100% renewable power systems.” says Prof. Lei Chen.
The above research is published in iEnergy, which is a fully open access journal published by Tsinghua University Press. iEnergy publishes peer-reviewed high-quality research representing important advances of significance to emerging power systems. At its discretion, Tsinghua University Press will pay the open access fee for all published papers from 2022 to 2026.
About iEnergy
iEnergy is a quarterly journal launched on March 2022. It has published 4 volumes (13 issues). Authors come from 21 countries, including China, the United States, Australia, etc., and world’s top universities and research institutes, including University of Nebraska Lincoln, Columbia University, Imperial College of Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, etc. 12 published articles are written by academicians from various countries. The published papers have also attracted an overwhelming response and have been cited by 179 journals, including top journals in the field of power and energy like Nature Materials, Advanced Materials, Joule, Energy Environmental Science, etc., from 45 countries.
iEnergy publishes original research on exploring all aspects of power and energy, including any kind of technologies and applications from power generation, transmission, distribution, to conversion, utilization, and storage. iEnergy provides a platform for delivering cutting-edge advancements of sciences and technologies for the future-generation power and energy systems. It has been indexed by ESCI (Impact factor 5.1), Ei Compendex, Scopus (CiteScoreTracker 2024 7.4), Inspec, CAS, and DOAJ.
Journal
iEnergy
Article Title
Frequency-fixed grid-forming control for less-dynamic and safer renewable power systems
Article Publication Date
27-Oct-2025
Predicting and lengthening pacemaker battery life
University of Leeds
Scientists have found a way to pick the best pacemaker for each patient, potentially making them last years longer.
Researchers at the University of Leeds, Université Grenoble Alpes and University Hospital of Grenoble-Alpes, France, have developed an algorithm which allows doctors to work out which pacemaker functions are likely to use the most battery power. Depending on the individual patient’s needs, some of these may be switched off, thereby conserving battery life.
Pacemakers usually last from seven to 14 years, depending on the features used – so switching off unnecessary functions has the potential to considerably increase the life of the device. This would benefit patients by reducing the number of surgeries needed, and would lower associated costs for the NHS.
A research paper, titled ‘Cardiac implantable electronic devices’ longevity: A novel modelling tool for estimation and comparison’, is published in the journal PLOS One. It has been made available via open access by the University of Leeds so doctors everywhere can access the modelling tool freely and use it to inform their clinical practice.
Dr Klaus Witte, Senior Lecturer and Consultant Cardiologist in the University of Leeds’ School of Medicine and at Leeds Teaching Hospitals’ NHS Trust, said: “This is the first step towards helping doctors to decide which pacemaker to choose and which program to activate, to provide the patient with the device and battery life that they need. This will hopefully delay battery replacements or maybe avoid them altogether - which is good for patients, the NHS and wider society as a whole.”
Professor Pascal Defaye of Université Grenoble Alpes and University Hospital of Grenoble-Alpes said: “This is a unique approach based upon real life data and allows direct comparisons between devices, options and manufacturers.”
A pacemaker is an implanted device that uses electrical pulses to keep the heart beating at a regular rate. They are used to treat heart failure, and abnormal heart rhythms which can cause patients to lose consciousness.
The device, which consists of a small metal box containing a battery and a small computer, sits under the skin near the collarbone. Leads attached to the box are threaded through a blood vessel to the heart’s chambers. The pacemaker senses via these leads what the heart is doing, and to add in beats if necessary. If the heart slows down or misses a beat, the pacemaker sends an electrical impulse, stimulating the heart to restore it to its normal rate.
There are several different types, which offer a range of sophisticated options. These include regulating a slow heart rate; prompting the heart chambers to beat in time; increasing the heart rate when the patient is active; remote monitoring, and activity pattern storage. Not all of these options are needed by every patient.
The research team used available data from pacemaker user manuals to calculate how much battery power each option used. Computer modelling was used to simulate the impact of switching on only the functions necessary for different health conditions. The modelling was verified against real-life patient data.
The results demonstrated which of the features used the most power; how they affected the longevity of the battery, and how many years of battery power could be gained by deactivating them.
Cardiologists use information provided by pacemaker manufacturers to select the most appropriate device for each patient, but due to the wide range and complexity of available appliances, this can be imprecise.
Dr Witte said: “We are often not sure how the options impact the battery life. Together, the patient and the doctor can discuss which functions are necessary, and which are ‘nice to have’, as well as what cost to the battery there is for each option.
“Choosing the right device and the right options for the patient can be likened to how one might choose a car, based upon the cost – which gadgets are needed, and which are not.
“Combining this with our previous publications that show how careful programming can help extend battery life, we are closer to providing patients with truly personalised care.”
The research team included French colleagues Pascal Defaye at University Hospital of Grenoble-Alpes; Serge Boveda at Clinique Pasteur, and Jean-Renaud Billuart, an engineer at industry partner Microport.
Further information
Contact University of Leeds press officer Lauren Ballinger with media enquiries via email on l.ballinger@leeds.ac.uk or by phone on 0113 3438059.
University of Leeds
The University of Leeds is one of the largest higher education institutions in the UK, with more than 40,000 students from more than 150 different countries. We are renowned globally for the quality of our teaching and research.
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Journal
PLOS One
Method of Research
Computational simulation/modeling
Subject of Research
People
Article Title
‘Cardiac implantable electronic devices’ longevity: A novel modelling tool for estimation and comparison’
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