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Foeschungszentrum Jülich - Research in Jülich 1_2013

Research in Jülich 1|201318 I f you are on the road with a digital camera, smart phone or tablet com- puter then you have almost certainly got a lithium battery or lithium-ion bat- tery with you. At the moment, these bat- teries are the state of the art if you want to store as much energy as possible in as little material as possible. However, research laboratories around the world have long been working on new batteries with even higher energy densities to achieve a breakthrough for electric cars and stationary storage technologies for wind and solar energy. A particularly promising candidate is the lithium-air battery which could theo- retically achieve 50 times the energy density of present lithium-ion batteries. “The use of lithium does, however, in- volve certain difficulties. It reacts vio- lently with atmospheric humidity or wa- ter. Furthermore, the metal is in short supply and would soon become more expensive if demand increases sharply,” says Prof. Rüdiger Eichel from Jülich’s In- stitute of Energy and Climate Research (IEK). This is where he sees major advan- tages for an alternative. Scientists from the Israel Institute of Technology – Tech- nion – in Haifa have developed such an alternative, which they presented for the first time in 2008: the silicon-air battery. Silicon is obtained from sand and re- Silicon in sand and oxygen in the balloon: Prof. Rüdiger Eichel uses these symbols to show that the raw materials for the new type of battery can be found almost anywhere. Storing Energy with Silicon and Air A new type of battery can do without scarce raw materials while being environmentally friendly and robust. Jülich scientists are working on exploiting its great potential for high-performance energy storage. Institute Background information

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