Dr. Tilmann Leisegang gave a lecture on Na-S batteries and energy storage issues 
28 October 2016

20161025-01On October 21, 2016, Dr. Tilmann Leisegang gave the lecture «Identification and assessment of Na+ solid electrolytes» at Samara Center for Theoretical Materials Science.

Dr. Leisegang outlined studies and research projects aimed at searching for new sodium-ion solid electrolytes and compounds for aluminum batteries. Many European scientists, involved in the development of energy storage materials, focus their careful attention and efforts on these two research areas.

In the lecture, Dr. Leisegang gave not only theoretical review but also outlined technological aspects of production and operation of batteries of different types.

At present, several materials can be used for sodium-ion batteries. For example, sulphur-sodium accumulators that have been used in industry for a long time. The main disadvantage of such batteries is their operation temperature (300 degrees Celsius), mover, they need a large area. One of the most important tasks for scientists is to capacitate sulphur-sodium accumulators to work at room temperature.

Active search for compounds with multivalent ions, for example Mg or Al ions is conducted. Multivalent ions are of special interest for researchers as lithium and sodium ions are able to carry an electron charge, while multivalent ions can carry a charge equal to several electronic charges. For example, aluminium can carry up to three electron charges, as its valence is +3. Thus, such accumulators will be compact and energetic. If we change lithium accumulators in an electric car to similar ones made of aluminium, they will be six times smaller by size or if we use aluminum batteries of the same weight and size as lithium ones, an electric car will be able to move six times farther.

Dr. Leisegang with his research team provide scientific support to the European three-year project “R2RBattery”. One of the recent results of the joint wok of Dr. Leisegang and SCTMS is the scientific article “Identification of solid oxygen-containing Na-electrolytes: An assessment based on crystallographic and economic parameters” co-authored by Prof. Vladislav Blatov and Aleksandr Shevchenko and published in September 2016.