Scientists Create New Eco Friendly Battery Made of Wood and Sodium [VIDEO]

A team of scientists at the University of Maryland are currently working on creating a long lasting eco friendly battery using only wood, tin and sodium as raw materials and which can store large amount of energy at once.

If you think you can design one at home, the researchers have sent out a caution saying not to try it  as the components in the battery are thousands times thinner than a piece of paper.

Batteries are generally created using lithium, but the new battery that is still in process will be made using sodium that makes it environmentally friendly. But when compared to lithium, sodium is not as energy-efficient; hence, it cannot be used for cell phone batteries.

But its low cost and common material make it ideal for usage in solar energy plants.

This project is led by Liangbing Hu, Teng Li and their team.

The normal lithium batteries are created on a stiff base that is too fragile to support the swelling and shrinking that occurs as electrons are stored in and used up from battery. But they discovered that the wood fibers permit the sodium ion battery to last more than 400 charging cycles that marks it as the longest lasing nanobatteries.

"The inspiration behind the idea comes from the trees," Hu, an assistant professor of materials science said in a press statement. "Wood fibers that make up a tree once held mineral-rich water, and so are ideal for storing liquid electrolytes, making them not only the base but an active part of the battery."

During the process, the team also noticed that after charging and discharging the battery hundreds of time the wood became wrinkled but remained intact. Through the computer models they learnt that the wrinkles relax the stress in battery while charging and recharging in order to make the battery survive several cycles.

"Pushing sodium ions through tin anodes often weaken the tin's connection to its base material," said Li, an associate professor of mechanical engineering. "But the wood fibers are soft enough to serve as a mechanical buffer, and thus can accommodate tin's changes. This is the key to our long-lasting sodium-ion batteries."

The study details were published in the American Chemical Society Publications.