Sometimes cell phones die sooner than expected or electric vehicles don’t have enough charge to reach their destination. The rechargeable lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries in these and other devices typically last hours or days between charging. However, with repeated use, batteries degrade and need to be recharged more frequently.
Electric vehicles (EVs) are transforming transportation, but challenges such as cost, longevity, and range remain barriers to widespread adoption. At the heart of these challenges lies battery technology—specifically, the electrolyte, a critical component that enables energy storage and delivery. The electrolyte’s properties directly impact a battery’s charging speed, power output, stability, and safety.
To overcome these hurdles, researchers are turning to AI-driven approaches to accelerate the discovery of novel battery materials.
SES AI, a leader in battery innovation, is leveraging the cutting-edge NVIDIA hardware and software ecosystem to revolutionize materials discovery. By combining domain-adapted LLMs with an AI model and GPU-accelerated simulations in a single workflow, SES AI compresses decades of research into months and unlocks groundbreaking advancements in EV battery performance.
As the world makes more use of renewable energy sources, new battery technology is needed to store electricity for the times when the sun isn’t shining, and the wind isn’t blowing.
“Current lithium batteries have reached their limitations in terms of energy storage capability, life cycle, and safety,” says Xiaolei Wang, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. “They’re good for applications like electric vehicles and portable electronics, but they’re not suitable for large-scale grid-level energy storage.”
With the help of the Canadian Light Source at the University of Saskatchewan, Wang and his team are developing new technologies to help make grid-level aqueous batteries that can use seawater as an electrolyte. The study is published in the journal Advanced Materials.
Researchers have developed a new material that, by harnessing the power of sunlight, can clear water of dangerous pollutants. Created through a combination of soft chemistry gels and electrospinning—a technique where electrical force is applied to liquid to craft small fibers—the team constructed thin fiber-like strips of titanium dioxide (TiO₂), a compound often utilized in solar cells, gas sensors and various self-cleaning technologies.
Despite being a great alternative energy source, solar fuel systems that utilize TiO₂ nanoparticles are often power-limited because they can only undergo photocatalysis, or create chemical reactions, by absorbing non-visible UV light. This can cause significant challenges to implementation, including low efficiency and the need for complex filtration systems.
Yet when researchers added copper to the material to improve this process, their new structures, called nanomats, were able to absorb enough light energy to break down harmful pollutants in air and water, said Pelagia-Iren Gouma, lead author of the study and a professor of materials science and engineering at The Ohio State University.
In a groundbreaking step toward sustainable energy, Helsinki has just unveiled the world’s largest heat pump, a game-changing system capable of providing heat to 30,000 homes. This massive infrastructure not only represents a technological breakthrough, but also signals a major shift in how cities can transition to greener energy sources. By harnessing renewable power and cutting dependence on fossil fuels, Finland is setting a new standard for efficient, low-emission heating solutions.
An international team of scientists has developed a semi-transparent solar cell with 12.3% efficiency and 30% transparency.
A collaborative effort in Germany has seen an increase in efficiency of synthetic fuel synthesis propelling aviation’s future without carbon emissions.
A new method inspired by coral reefs can capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and transform it into durable, fire-resistant building materials, offering a promising solution for carbon-negative construction.
The approach, developed by USC researchers and detailed in a study published in npj Advanced Manufacturing, draws inspiration from the ocean’s coral reefs’ natural ability to create robust structures by sequestering carbon dioxide. The resulting mineral-polymer composites demonstrate extraordinary mechanical strength, fracture toughness and fire-resistance capabilities.
“This is a pivotal step in the evolution of converting carbon dioxide,” said Qiming Wang, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. “Unlike traditional carbon capture technologies that focus on storing carbon dioxide or converting it into liquid substances, we found this new electrochemical manufacturing process converts the chemical compound into calcium carbonate minerals in 3D-printed polymer scaffolds.”
While biodiesel provides a cleaner-burning alternative to petroleum diesel, it produces CO2 and hazardous wastewater during manufacturing, requiring extra steps to achieve sustainability. A diagnostic study led by University of Michigan researchers works to improve a process that captures CO2 while treating biodiesel wastewater and produces valuable co-products like fuels and green chemicals.
During biodiesel production, fats—like vegetable oils, animal fats or recycled restaurant grease—are transformed into fuel through a process called transesterification. With the help of a catalyst, an alcohol (typically methanol) breaks the bonds in the fat molecules to create glycerol and long, chain-like molecules called fatty acid esters.
The fatty acid esters, which resemble petroleum diesel’s molecular structure, become biodiesel while the glycerol goes into the wastewater as a byproduct. If left untreated, glycerol can pollute natural water resources by depleting oxygen levels, suffocating fish and other organisms.
In recent years, researchers have been trying to develop increasingly advanced battery technologies that can be charged faster and store more energy, while also remaining safe and stable over time. Lithium-metal batteries (LMBs), which contain a lithium-metal-based anode, have been found to be promising alternatives to lithium-ion batteries (LiBs), which are currently the most widely used rechargeable batteries.
A key advantage of LMBs is that they can store significantly more energy than LiBs, which could be advantageous for electric vehicles and other large or advanced electronics. Despite their potential, these batteries have so far proved to be less stable and safe than LiBs, while also charging relatively slowly; limitations that have so far prevented their widespread adoption.
A research team at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and other institutes recently designed new electrolytes based on symmetric organic salts, which could help to boost the performance of LMBs. Their newly designed electrolytes, introduced in a paper in Nature Energy, were found to improve the stability and charging speed of LMBs, preventing the formation of dendrites (lithium deposits that cause a battery’s performance to decline over time).
