Mystery of why rechargeable batteries self-discharge solved

Quote:

Dal researchers' chance discovery could help extend battery life by replacing tape that causes self‑discharge It happens far too often: you plug your laptop in and walk away only to return hours or days later to find it has lost some of its charge despite sitting idle and unused. The phenomenon — called self-discharge — has frustrated users and industry alike, and puzzled manufacturers trying to determine why lithium-ion battery cells tend to lose some of their charge over time. ... That's when they found that the polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, in the tape decomposes and creates the molecule that leads to the self-discharge. The molecule is called a redox shuttle because it can travel to the positive side of the electrode, then to the negative side and then back to the positive side. So, it shuttles between the electrodes and that creates the self-discharge, just like lithium is supposed to do. The problem is that the shuttle molecule is doing it all the time in the background, even when no lithium is supposed to move when the battery just sitting there. "It's something we never expected because no one looks at these inactive components, these tapes and plastic foils in the battery cell but it really needs to be considered if you want to limit side reactions in the battery cell," he says of the tape made from PET, a strong, lightweight plastic used widely in packaging and pop bottles.

https://www.dal.ca/news/2023/01/16/d...discharge.html

Probably a big discovery.

via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/IB9NkSF