Abstract
BY MERELY TWEAKING a synthetic strategy for making a popular lithium-ion battery material, scientists have produced a battery that charges and discharges in a matter of seconds, rather than the minutes needed for typical lithium-ion batteries. Used in cell phones, laptops, and other devices, Li-ion batteries are attractive because they can hold a lot of charge, yet they’re relatively slow to put it out or take it up. The new battery’s swift charging and discharging could help make possible the use of Li-ion batteries in applications such as electric cars. To build the battery, materials science professor Gerbrand Ceder and graduate student Byoungwoo Kang at MIT synthesized a popular modern Li-ion battery material, LiFePO 4 ( Nature 2009, 458 , 190). The group used standard starting materials for preparing LiFePO 4 , but in slightly different amounts than usual. This method produced 50-nm-sized LiFePO 4 particles, each coated with a glassy substance that’s slightly depleted in iron and phosphorus atoms rel...
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