According to foreign media reports, Toyota is working with scientists from the University of Kyoto to develop a new type of fluorine-ion battery. The energy per unit weight of the battery is about seven times that of the traditional lithium-ion battery, and it can also extend the range of electric vehicles to 1000 kilometers.
According to reports, the team has developed a prototype of the rechargeable battery. The anode is made of fluorine, copper and cobalt, and the cathode is mainly made of lanthanum.
It is said that the new fluorine-ion battery can significantly increase the energy capacity of lithium-ion batteries with the same installation space due to its seven times higher energy density per unit weight. It is unclear how long the prototype battery tested by Kyoto University will be ready for mass production. However, generally speaking, at least as far as lithium-ion batteries are known, it is not always possible to move from prototype batteries in the laboratory to mass production.
This fluorine-ion battery does not need lithium at all. It is called FIB battery. Fluoride ions are transferred from one electrode to another through electrolyte to generate electricity. The advantage is that each metal atom can transfer multiple electrons, thus achieving high energy density.
In fact, Toyota is not the only company that studies fluoride ion batteries. Such batteries are also being tested at the Karlsruhe Institute of technology or the Helmholtz Institute in Ulm. However, due to various reasons, this kind of battery has not yet achieved mass production.
The reason why FIB can not be mass produced is that they can only work at high temperature. The solid electrolyte must be heated to a certain temperature to conduct electricity, and the electrode will expand at high temperature. So researchers at Toyota and Kyoto University hope to solve the problem with alloys made of cobalt, nickel and copper. Now, it is necessary to optimize the combination of these materials so that the battery can be charged and discharged safely without loss of capacity.
It is not clear at what temperature the prototype battery will work at. Heating the battery all the time will make it more complicated in use and will not be used for driving. In 2018, Honda Research Institute scientists are working with researchers at Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to develop a fib battery that can work at room temperature, but only charge and discharge seven times. (the energy density is 10 times higher than that of lithium-ion batteries? Honda Research Institute and others cooperate to develop fluorine ion battery)
According to reports, battery experts believe that this FIB battery will not be launched in the lithium-ion battery market before 2030. It should be noted that lithium ion batteries were first developed in 1985, but commercial production was not started until the 1990s.
2020-10-17