Safer – and Smaller! – Electric Car Batteries on the Horizon

Inside the chemistry labs at the University of Sherbrooke, Canada, a team perfected a polymer compound that revolutionizes electric batteries, thus contributing to safer electric cars. 

“[The second polymer] creates imperfections which prevent the crystallization of the main polymer,” says Vincent St-Onge, Ph.D. candidate at the Chemistry Department at the Université de Sherbrooke. “The more defaults there are, the more it becomes soft and sticky, like cookie dough.”

This combination allows the lithium ions to circulate between two electrodes – in one direction when the battery charges, and in the other when it discharges. The traditional electrolyte is a volatile and inflammable liquid – if a battery is damaged, it has a high risk of bursting into flames – whereas the polymer-based electrolyte is made of a material more or less stodgy, and therefore less likely to leak. This helps create solid batteries that are not only safer but also more compact!