An SKKU research team led by researcher Gwi Ok Park from the Department of Chemistry and researcher Jeong Bae Yoon from the Department of Energy Science developed a design technique that can control the change in volume of lithium-ion batteries when charging and discharging.
Currently, the lithium-ion batteries that people use in most smartphones and electric cars have a problem because the volume of the battery decreases through use, due to which people have to replace batteries regularly. With the increasing need for larger volumes of lithium-ion batteries, researchers were determined to find methodsthat could stop the degradation of lithium-ion batteries’ capacity. Until now, there has been research on metallic materials to replace graphite, a cathode material, but there were not any effective results to solve the issue of volume degradation.
Through this new research, the team was able to double the battery life of lithium-ion batteries, and they could also lessen the volume change. This achievement led to the discovery for solving the problem with lithium-ion batteries, and it has been selected as the cover paper of the international journal Advanced Functional Materials, which was released on May 3, 2016.