Clay Could Help Make Lithium-Ion Batteries More Stable

Electronics360 reported that students at Rice University have created a lithium-ion battery that can supply stable power at temperatures of up to 120 degrees celsius, and the secret is clay.
As quoted in the publication:

This discovery hinged on the flexible qualities of bentonite clay and room-temperature ionic liquids that serve as both a separator and an electrolyte system and provide a conductive path between a battery’s anode and cathode.
“Clay naturally has a lot of moisture in it, and that’s not a problem when you’re doing supercapacitors,” says Kaushik Kalaga, a graduate student and lead author of the new study. “But a battery has to have a lithium-ion conductive species in the electrolyte to conduct lithium ions from the cathode or anode, or vice versa, when you charge and discharge.
“Lithium is very reactive with water, so our first challenge was to eliminate water from the clay while keeping its structure intact,” he adds.

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