A team of engineers, chemists and materials scientists in China and the U.S. has found a material that can be used to dramatically speed up charging time for lithium batteries without loss of capacity. In their study published in the journal Nature Communications, the group used electron microscopy and machine learning to find a material that could be used to overcome bottlenecks during charging.
One of the major goals of lithium-ion battery makers over the past several years has been speeding up battery charging, especially large batteries, such as those used in electric vehicles. The team noted that faster battery charging requires a material that can reduce the bottlenecks posed by materials currently used in such batteries.
To find it, the researchers turned to electron microscopy, to watch how a charge moved through niobium tungsten oxide (NbWo) crystals. They found that the structure of the crystals had a major impact on charging speeds. More specifically, they found that if the crystals arranged themselves randomly while being grown, charging would occur much faster due to a reduction in lattice distortion.
The team next turned to machine learning to help them find the specific NbWo crystals that would provide the type of performance improvements they saw with the electron microscope. After testing 84,000 possibilities, they found rGO/Nb₁₆W₅O₅₅.
Testing of the material showed that when charged at 80°C, the material allowed for charging at a rate of 116 milliamp-hours per grain in just 45 seconds. That, the team notes, is 68.5% of the believed limit of lithium-ion batteries now on the market. It was also faster than the benchmark set by the U.S. Advanced Battery Consortium.
After building a prototype using the new material, the team found that it could hold 77% of the initial capacity after 500 charging cycles, while also maintaining a high energy density.
The research team acknowledges that they have a lot more work ahead of them before a battery using their material could be commercialized, such as solving the problem of electrode thickness mismatches with commercial specifications.
More information:
Yaqing Guo et al, Improving the fast-charging capability of NbWO-based Li-ion batteries, Nature Communications (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-57576-1
© 2025 Science X Network
Citation:
Using niobium tungsten oxide to allow lithium batteries to charge faster (2025, March 24)
retrieved 25 March 2025
from
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
