Sungkyunkwan University(SKKU) announced on the 8th, that the creation of the next generation batteries has been accelerated with the development of the world’s first nano-material (Ordered mesoporous material) real-time structural change observation technique.

Prof. Kim Ji-man, SKKU Department of Chemistry and specialist in nano-structure material synthesis, in joint research with Prof. Yoon Won-sub, SKKU department of Energy and specialist in real-time electrode material analysis, were able to produce this result.

According to them, while the diversity of secondary battery has increased from mobile devices to electric cars, the increase in high storage capacity has shown limited growth in the past several years.Although utilizing nano-material as the electrode material for secondary batteries has already been suggested, due to the lack of definitive identification of the high efficiency reaction mechanism of the nano-material, commercialization was stuck.

In order to solve this problem Prof. Kim and Prof. Yoon, along with Prof. Kim Han-soo of Hanyang Univ. and Prof. Shin Tae-ju of UNIST conducted real-time charging and discharging experiments, and devised a technique of observing the changes in the nano-structural which led to definitively identifying the reaction mechanism for charging and discharging of a metalic-oxide nano-structure.

“This world’s first nano-structure analysis technique for secondary batteries is not limited to lithium-ion batteries, and can be applied to next generation secondary batteries,  fuel cells and super capacitors, making it the basis for  next generation high capacity batteries”  predicted Prof. Kim and Yoon.

This research was conducted with the support of Samsung Science Technology  Foundation and Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning(KETEP), and the result was published in the chemical and nano-material  international journal of ACS Nano’s online edition on May 26.

Link to media report: http://news1.kr/articles/?2269457