Japanese scientists want to determine the needed components to design batteries with less volatility and flammability.
Scientists at the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Industrial Science are using gold ions to understand the behaviour of liquids at the atomic level. This, in turn, would help them determine what are the needed components to design batteries with less volatility and flammability along with better conductivity for more energy efficient devices.
In a study published in the past week in Science Advances, the researchers explain that in order to accomplish such goal, they conducted the first direct observation of gold ions moving in liquid.
Led by the Institute’s Associate Professor Teruyasu Mizoguchi, the team of experts put a liquid into an annular dark-field scanning transmission electron microscopy system. In this system, the brightness of the ion depends on the atomic number and, among metals, gold has one of the highest. Also, the liquid was placed in a vacuum.
