Lithium is a promising anode candidate for future high-energy-density batteries thanks to its light weight and the fact that it has the highest theoretical capacity (of 3860 mAh/g) and the lowest electrochemical potential of all metals. However, it does suffer from several serious problems, one of which is that its volume drastically changes during battery recycling. Now, a team of researchers from Stanford University in the US has tackled this problem head-on by confining lithium anodes inside the interlayer gaps of “lithophilic” layered reduced graphene oxide. The new composite anode keeps up to around 3390 mAh/g of its capacitance, has a low overpotential of roughly 80 mV at 3 mA/cm2 and other good properties, such as a flat voltage profile in a carbonate electrolyte………
http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/64437
