Since the early 1970s, lithium has been the most popular element for batteries: it’s the lightest of all metals and has the greatest electrochemical potential. But a lithium-based battery has a major disadvantage: it’s highly flammable, and when it overheats, it can burst into flames. For years, scientists have searched for safer battery materials that still have the same advantages as lithium. While plastics (or polymers) seemed like an obvious choice, researchers never fully understood how the material would change when an ion charge was introduced. Now a McCormick team has married two traditional theories in materials science that can explain how the charge dictates the structure of the material. This opens the door for many applications, including a new class of batteries. Monica Olvera de la Cruz “There is a huge effort to go beyond lithium in a flammable solvent,” says Monica Olvera de la Cruz, Lawyer Taylor Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and senior author of the paper. “People have been looking at alternatives that are not explosive, like plastics. But they didn’t know how to compute what happens when you put in a charge.” The team looked at plastics known as block copolymers (BCPs) that
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