Phys.org February 25, 2020
An international team of researchers (Portugal. USA – UT Austin) made a battery with two different metals as electrodes and a lithium-rich glass electrolyte which would feed both electrodes with lithium ions, on charge and discharge with no need for lithium metal. The electrochemical cell demonstrates an entanglement between negative resistance, negative capacitance, self-charge, self-cycling, and the activation energy vs thermal energy or external work. The phenomenon of self-cycling is enhanced at low temperatures where the activation energy is higher than the thermal energy. These batteries can be used in extremely low-frequency communications and in devices such as blinking lights, electronic beepers, voltage-controlled oscillators, inverters, switching power supplies, digital converters and function generators, and eventually for technologies related to modern computers…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Bistable energy landscape for a lithium-glass ferroelectric-electrolyte in contact with an aluminum-negative electrode and self-cycling process in an electrochemical aluminum/lithium glass/copper cell. Credit: Braga et al