Electrochemical Society<\/a>\u00a0conference, everybody was talking about this problem,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s an active area that nobody has a good answer for yet.\u201d<\/p>\nMembers of her lab have been interested in this issue for several years and have published about half a dozen papers on the topic. What\u2019s unique about their approach, she says, is that they\u2019re using computational models to look at the problem on a mesoscale.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not looking at each atom, but small volumes of material that contain lots of atoms,\u201d Ryan says.<\/p>\n
To put it into perspective, imagine a colony of ants. At an equivalent to the atomic level, you can see the way a single ant\u2019s joints move, or how its small mandibles can lift food. On the macroscale, you can maybe see where the anthill is, but any knowledge about how the ants have created it would have to be inferred, because they are far too small to see. But on the mesoscale, you can see how the ants interact with one other and cooperate to use their individual strength to move in concert to build an anthill thousands of times their size.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the mesoscale,\u201d she says, \u201cyou can start to resolve an actual dendrite growing.\u201d<\/p>\n
One way that Ryan\u2019s lab has done this is through the modeling of a porous material that can be theoretically constructed in the electrolyte layer of the battery to make it harder for dendrites to grow. To grow through this medium, which roughly resembles a level of Pac Man with fragments of parallel barriers, the dendrites would have to frequently twist and turn. Her lab\u2019s research has shown that an obstacle like that could prove effective in slowing the growth and damage of dendrites.<\/p>\n
She acknowledges that this kind of research alone won\u2019t solve the dendrite problem, but that\u2019s part of what makes it so rewarding. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to add to the development of these new batteries by working with groups,\u201d she says. \u201cWe work with people to understand the fundamentals that can then help inform their experiments, their design, or their selection of materials.\u201d<\/p>\n
This technology, Ryan says, could one day be used to help power electric cars or better regulate the collection and distribution of renewable energy sources like wind and solar.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the field, the push is toward sustainable energy. Every car on the road, every bus, every train is burning fossil fuels and producing greenhouse gases,\u201d she says. \u201cIf you can replace the cars with electric vehicles, that could help. In the case of increasing renewables like solar and wind, you\u2019ll want grid level storage. At night or when there\u2019s no wind, how are we going to get the energy? And if it\u2019s too sunny out and we don\u2019t need all that energy, how could we store it? So, another idea is to have better batteries for grid level storage.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ryan cautions that we shouldn\u2019t expect to see wide commercialization of these batteries anytime soon. Just as lithium-ion batteries were slow to gain popularity and acceptance in the \u201980s and \u201990s, these batteries will likely need a big backer interested enough in their potential to drive the research forward and introduce the product to the commercial market.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere will be a specific application that they\u2019re needed for, and that might start it,\u201d she predicts. \u201cI would guess that once you get to that point, you\u2019ll start to have advances in the manufacturing and the cost, and that is when you will see it make its way into the market.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Prof. Ryan uses computational models to improve the capacity of lithium and metal batteries by breaking up dendrite growth. Such potential improvements will help power green and personal technology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8588,"featured_media":123821,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[236,909,245],"tags":[378,273,258,379,243,244],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77046"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8588"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77046"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":128710,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77046\/revisions\/128710"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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