Sodium ion battery the future of electronic devices power supply

Lithium-ion batteries are the backbone of mostly all the electronic devices may it be your Android, iPhone, laptops or any other device the Li-ion batteries have served so well that in future there may be shortage of Lithium for the production of batteries if we are not able to get an alternative source of power.

Sodium could be used as an alternative for Lithium in the future batteries as it cheap, abundant and easily available but there lies some problems with sodium(Na) that the battery with Na-ion takes longer time to charge and it's discharge is so slow that it could not power high potential devices,but researchers led by Yong Lei, a professor at the Technical University of Ilmenau in Germany, have achieved a significant improvement in this area. The research claims that it has achieved the highest efficiency from a Na-ion battery which could challenge any Lithium battery in terms of charge and discharge.

To solve this problem there was a need to know the basics difference in reactions of both Na and Li. Sodium electronic configuration ends with 3s¹ whereas for Lithium it is 2s² which tells that both these metals can loose electrons which is required for a battery to operate but the size of sodium is larger so it is quite tough for Na ions to get absorbed or released by the electrods. However the size of sodium remains the same only the size of electrode was changed by molecule design strategy of pi-conjugated system, which basically involves manipulating the way that these molecules bond with each other. Physically, this strategy results in a terrace morphology, consisting of multiple, widely spaced layers that form a faster route for the sodium ions to move through. The extended π-conjugated system also improves the charge transport and stabilizes the charged and discharged states so that they can better tolerate the fast insertion/extraction of Na ions.

In terms of battery performance, this change results in significant improvements. As always, there is still a tradeoff between charge/discharge rates and capacity. But the new Na-ion batteries can operate at a current density (a measure of the charge/discharge rate) that is 1000 times higher (10 A/g vs. 10 mA/g) than most previously reported organic Na-ion batteries while retaining a much higher capacity (72 mAh/g).
At an intermediate current density (1 A/g), the new battery delivers an impressive reversible capacity of 160 mAh/g, which is one of the highest values reported for both organic Na-ion and Li-ion batteries to date. The battery also exhibits good capacity retention (70% retention after 400 cycles).

The scientists says that a lot of improvement has to be done to make this technology comes to your pocket but you have to wait for quiet some time.