This Soft Lithium-Ion Battery Can Stretch to Over Twice Its Length — and Heal When Cut

This novel battery works when bent, stretched, and even after being cut — healing itself at room temperatures.

Gareth Halfacree
2 months agoWearables / HW101

Researchers from China's Jilin University have come up with a new approach to build soft, stretchable lithium-ion batteries that can heal even after being cut in half — with a view to use in wearables and more.

"Our achievement lies in the construction of a LIB [Lithium-Ion Battery] with all-in-one configuration, wherein the electrolyte and electrodes can be fused together at the interface through the exchange of the dynamic imine bonds existing in both the electrolyte and electrodes," senior and corresponding author Xiaokong Liu explains. "Such a design not only endows the battery with both stretchability and self-healing capability, but also overcomes the delamination problem of the LIB upon stretching."

A novel lithium-ion battery design can flex, stretch, and even repair itself when cut, researchers say. (📹: Li et al)

The battery produced by the team was created by "exploiting dynamic covalent polymers crosslinked by dynamic imine bonds as both the electrolyte and the binder of electrodes," Liu explains — delivering a device that is both flexible and stretchable, capable of elongating to as much as 220 percent of its original length before breaking.

It's not just about the battery's stretchability, though, but its ability to heal damage: in testing the team showed how prototype batteries produced using the new approach could be cut in half, pushed back together, and automatically heal the damage at room temperature. "Furthermore," the researchers note, "the cut and then healed LIB can still deliver an average discharge capacity of 126.4mAh/g⁻¹ and steadily provide power for [an] LED."

The team's work has been published in the journal Supramolecular Materials, under open-access terms.

Gareth Halfacree
Freelance journalist, technical author, hacker, tinkerer, erstwhile sysadmin. For hire: freelance@halfacree.co.uk.
Latest articles
Sponsored articles
Related articles
Latest articles
Read more
Related articles