The research, published in the Journal of Materials Science, tackles a fundamental weakness of metallic bismuth as an anode material. When bismuth stores sodium, it does so through an alloying reaction, in which sodium atoms insert themselves into the metal lattice to form sodium-bismuth compounds. The reaction is fast and delivers a high theoretical capacity, but it comes at a steep physical cost: the electrode material swells dramatically during charging and shrinks again during discharge. Repeated over hundreds or thousands of cycles, this volumetric pumping action pulverizes the electrode, cracks it apart from the inside, and causes the capacity to fade rapidly.

Researchers led by Mingzhao Li and corresponding author Shaowei Yao at North China University of Science and Technology in Tangshan approached the problem with a synthesis strategy built around metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs. These are crystalline scaffolds made of metal nodes connected by organic linkers, forming porous lattices with enormous internal surface area. The team first fabricated bismuth-based MOF precursors using a facile solvothermal method, in which the framework crystallizes from a heated solvent mixture. The bismuth atoms are distributed throughout the framework at the molecular level, rather than being clumped into large particles.

The real magic happens in the next step. By carefully regulating the volume ratios of the solvents used in the synthesis and the temperatures applied during subsequent thermal treatment, the researchers converted the MOF precursors into porous bismuth-carbon composites with tunable morphologies. The organic linkers of the framework carbonize in place, wrapping the bismuth species within a conductive carbon matrix. The result is a material in which electrochemically active bismuth is spatially confined and stabilized inside a porous carbon framework, with the morphology controllable simply by adjusting processing parameters.

This confinement effect is the key to the composite’s durability. Because each bismuth region is embedded within the carbon matrix, the volumetric expansion that occurs during sodium alloying is absorbed and accommodated by the surrounding scaffold rather than being transmitted as destructive stress to the electrode as a whole. The carbon framework also constructs abundant conductive pathways for ion and electron migration, addressing another chronic weakness of alloying anodes: poor electrical connectivity as the electrode microstructure degrades over time.

The electrochemical results are impressive. Among all the samples prepared, the optimized electrode, designated Bi@C-100:30-800, delivered a reversible specific capacity of 443.6 milliampere-hours per gram after 500 long-term cycles at a current density of 500 milliamperes per gram. Even more strikingly, when the current density was doubled to 1 ampere per gram, the electrode still achieved a reversible capacity of 416.5 milliampere-hours per gram after 1000 cycles, accompanied by a coulombic efficiency of 99.9 percent. That efficiency figure, which measures how much charge put into the cell comes back out, indicates an electrode operating with almost no parasitic side reactions.

To put these numbers in context, the capacity retention after 1000 cycles at a demanding current density represents the kind of performance that alloying anodes rarely achieve without elaborate protective engineering. The near-perfect coulombic efficiency suggests that the carbon confinement is doing more than just mechanically buffering the swelling; it is also stabilizing the interface between the electrode and the electrolyte, suppressing the continuous decomposition reactions that typically consume active material and electrolyte in failing batteries.

The synthesis approach is also notable for its controllability. Rather than relying on a single fixed recipe, the team demonstrated that both the solvent volume ratios during MOF formation and the thermal treatment temperature during carbonization could be used as independent knobs to tune the final composite morphology. This tunability allowed the researchers to systematically optimize the structure, identifying the 100:30 solvent ratio and 800-degree Celsius treatment as the winning combination. Such controllable synthesis is essential for scaling any laboratory material toward practical manufacturing, where reproducibility and process windows matter as much as peak performance.

Bismuth itself is an intriguing choice for sodium-ion anodes. It is far less reactive and toxic than many alternative metals, and its layered crystal structure provides channels that accommodate sodium ions with relatively low diffusion barriers, enabling fast charge transfer. Previous studies have explored bismuth nanospheres, nanoflowers, nanosheets, and alloyed bismuth-antimony particles confined in various carbon architectures, reflecting a broad research consensus that confinement strategies are the path forward for alloying-type anodes in both sodium and potassium-ion systems.

The broader significance of this work lies in the convergence of two powerful ideas in energy materials research: MOF-derived porous carbon architectures and alloying anode stabilization. As sodium-ion batteries push toward commercial deployment in grid storage and electric vehicles, anode materials that combine high capacity, fast reaction kinetics, and thousand-cycle durability will determine whether the technology can compete on performance as well as cost. This bismuth-carbon nanocomposite, with its remarkable cycling stability achieved through a controllable and scalable synthesis route, suggests that the answer may well be yes.

Subject of Research: Controllable synthesis of Bi@C nanocomposites for high-performance sodium-ion batteries anodes

Article Title: Controllable synthesis of Bi@C nanocomposites for high-performance sodium-ion batteries anodes

Article References: Li, M., Cui, K., Wang, J., & Yao, S. (2026). Controllable synthesis of Bi@C nanocomposites for high-performance sodium-ion batteries anodes. Journal of Materials Science, 61(42), 33297-33310. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-026-13749-x

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10853-026-13749-x

Keywords: Controllable, synthesis, nanocomposites, high-performance, sodium-ion, batteries, anodes, scientific research

The scale of the robotics market itself is striking. Valued at approximately 90 billion US dollars in 2024, the global robotics market is projected to reach roughly 416 billion dollars by 2035, a compound annual growth rate of about 15 percent. Service and mobile robots, the segments most dependent on advanced battery technology, are among the fastest-growing subsectors, with 200,000 professional service robots sold in 2024 alone. Each of those machines needs a safe, energy-dense, and geometrically versatile power source, and the installed fleet grows in lockstep with battery demand.

The most surprising finding in the analysis concerns cumulative battery consumption over a robot’s operational lifetime. Although a single robotic battery pack is modest in capacity, typically 2 to 3 kWh, commercial robots operating in hot-swap configurations subject each pack to 3 to 4 full charge-discharge cycles per day. At this intensity, a nickel-manganese-cobalt pack with a rated cycle life of 1,500 cycles requires replacement approximately once per year. Over a 7 to 10 year service life, a single machine may therefore consume 20 to 30 battery packs, amounting to a cumulative battery capacity of 60 to 88 kWh—equivalent to the entire battery of a passenger electric vehicle such as a Tesla Model 3 or Model Y. The estimate is sensitive to assumed cycle life: under a conservative 1,000-cycle scenario, cumulative consumption rises to roughly 90 to 130 kWh, while a 2,000-cycle scenario reduces it to about 45 to 66 kWh. In all realistic ranges, however, the per-robot cumulative demand remains on the order of one passenger EV battery.

The duty-cycle arithmetic behind this figure is transparent. Commercial autonomous mobile robots in logistics, intralogistics, and hospitality typically operate 12 to 20 hours per day, and each 2 to 3 kWh pack sustains 4 to 6 hours of active runtime, yielding three to four full pack rotations per 24-hour shift cycle. Annual replacement at 1,500 rated cycles follows directly: 1,500 cycles divided by 3.5 cycles per day gives roughly 1.17 years, consistent with field-reported pack-swap intervals in 24/7 fulfillment fleets. This analysis reveals that improvements in cycle life and safety—core advantages of solid-state technology—carry disproportionate economic and environmental value in robotic applications.

The power requirements of modern robots align remarkably well with the intrinsic properties of solid-state batteries. Safety is paramount: a thermal runaway event in a conventional lithium-ion battery, triggered by mechanical damage, internal short circuits, or thermal abuse, can produce temperatures exceeding 800 degrees Celsius and release toxic gases. For cobots, service robots, and wearable exoskeletons in direct physical contact with humans, this risk profile is unacceptable, and regulatory frameworks such as ISO 13482 for personal care robots increasingly mandate stringent safety requirements that conventional batteries struggle to meet. Inorganic solid electrolytes, whether oxide-based garnets like Li7La3Zr2O12 or sulfide-based argyrodites like Li6PS5Cl, are inherently non-flammable and do not generate combustible gases upon failure.

Energy density is equally compelling. Compatibility of solid electrolytes with lithium-metal anodes promises a step change in gravimetric energy density, potentially exceeding 400 Wh per kilogram at the cell level, while anode-free architectures that rely on in-situ lithium plating onto a bare current collector push this frontier even further. The absence of liquid electrolyte also enables bipolar cell architectures, achieving voltage multiplication within a single stack and improving volumetric energy density by a potential 30 to 50 percent over conventional designs—a transformative advantage for volume-constrained robotic platforms. Geometric versatility adds another dimension: solid electrolyte thin films can be deposited by sputtering, atomic layer deposition, or solution processing, enabling battery architectures with thicknesses on the order of micrometers that can be conformally integrated into robotic structures.

The current landscape of solid electrolyte materials is diverse, and each class suits different robotic platforms. Oxide garnets such as LLZO and NASICON-type LATP offer ionic conductivities of roughly 10^-4 to 10^-3 S per centimeter at room temperature and exceptional thermal stability beyond 300 degrees Celsius, but their inherent brittleness poses challenges for robots experiencing mechanical shock and vibration. Sulfide argyrodites and glass-ceramics exhibit the highest room-temperature ionic conductivities, reaching 10^-2 S per centimeter, and their low Young’s modulus enables cold-pressing fabrication; however, they generate toxic hydrogen sulfide upon moisture exposure, necessitating hermetically sealed enclosures, moisture getters, and onboard sensing coupled with rapid pack isolation. Polymer electrolytes such as PEO-based systems achieve about 10^-4 S per centimeter at 60 to 80 degrees Celsius but suffer from poor room-temperature conductivity near 10^-6 S per centimeter, though single-ion conducting polymers and machine-learning-guided screening of compositions achieving room-temperature conductivity above 10^-4 S per centimeter with fracture strain above 50 percent offer promising directions for soft and wearable robotic end-effectors.

Significant hurdles remain before solid-state batteries can directly replace incumbent technology in demanding robotic platforms. The solid-solid interface is the most critical limitation: lithium dendrite propagation has been observed in both oxide and sulfide systems under high current densities above 1 milliampere per square centimeter, and loss of solid-solid contact during impact, vibration, or repeated bending can raise interfacial impedance by an order of magnitude, currently a leading cause of capacity fade in early pack prototypes. Sustained high-rate power capability also trails state-of-the-art lithium-ion cells: the best-reported sulfide-based cells deliver continuous discharge at 2 to 3C, but burst capability beyond 5C—routinely achieved by high-power lithium-ion chemistries that already power legged robots during jumping and rapid locomotion—remains a target rather than a demonstrated capability in practical cells above 10 Ah. Current solid-state battery costs remain 5 to 10 times higher than conventional lithium-ion batteries, although the total-cost-of-ownership analysis suggests the premium may be offset by reduced replacement frequency if superior cycle life is realized at pack level.

A crucial distinction must be drawn between laboratory and commercially validated cycle life. The 3,000 to 5,000 cycle figures projected for some sulfide and oxide systems refer to small-format laboratory cells cycled at modest rates under tightly controlled temperature, pressure, and atmosphere. Commercially relevant multi-Ah cells assembled under manufacturing tolerances and cycled under the broader thermal, current, and mechanical envelope expected in robotic deployment currently report 500 to 1,500 cycles to 80 percent retention. Closing this lab-to-pack gap is one of the central engineering tasks the field must accomplish before the cumulative-cycling economics can be realized in deployed robotic fleets.

Looking ahead, the author proposes a conditional roadmap for solid-state battery and robotics convergence. In the near term, from 2025 to 2028, thin-film solid-state batteries could power micro-robots, while the realistic deployment path for structural integration involves parasitic-mass reduction by embedding thin battery layers into secondary elements such as enclosure covers and body panels. In the mid-term, from 2028 to 2032, sulfide-based packs exceeding 350 Wh per kilogram could serve service robots, contingent on roll-to-roll-compatible electrolyte films below 30 micrometers in thickness, pack-level energy densities demonstrated in cells above 10 Ah with cycle life above 2,000, cost reduction to within roughly twice present lithium-ion pack costs, and standardization of safety and swap-interface protocols across robot manufacturers. In the long term, from 2032 to 2035 and beyond, fully load-bearing structural batteries—in which carbon fiber electrodes combined with solid polymer electrolyte matrices serve simultaneously as energy storage and chassis—could reach commercial platforms, though present-day demonstrations of 24 Wh per kilogram with elastic moduli above 25 GPa remain far from the 150 Wh per kilogram and 40 GPa thresholds needed to substitute for aluminum or carbon-fiber frames. Machine learning is accelerating the search: models trained on high-throughput computational datasets can predict ionic conductivity and mechanical properties with sufficient accuracy to guide targeted synthesis, and interpretable workflows now attribute predicted conductivity to local structural motifs, supporting the design of halide-class electrolytes with improved ambient-air stability that relax glovebox requirements during assembly. The author calls upon the battery research community to expand its application horizon beyond electric vehicles and engage with roboticists in defining the performance targets, testing protocols, and form factors that will govern the next generation of mobile power systems—an engineering challenge whose foundational elements, the analysis concludes, are already in place.

Subject of Research: Solid-state battery technology and its convergence with robotics

Article Title: Solid-state batteries: a new frontier for robotics

Article References: Lee, D. (2026). Solid-state batteries: a new frontier for robotics. Frontiers in Batteries and Electrochemistry, 5, Article 1873385. https://doi.org/10.3389/fbael.2026.1873385

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fbael.2026.1873385

Keywords: solid-state batteries, robotics, solid electrolytes, energy density, structural batteries, hot-swap, lithium-metal anodes, battery demand, service robots, machine learning, Solid-state, batteries

The review, led by Luis Fernando Muñiz-Torres and Felipe Caballero-Briones, situates aluminum-air batteries within the broader search for alternatives to lithium-ion technology. Lithium-ion batteries currently dominate the market with energy densities of 150 to 250 Wh per kilogram, but their cycle life of roughly 1,000 to 1,500 cycles remains a limitation, and concerns about lithium availability and environmental impact have intensified the hunt for next-generation systems. Among the candidates based on sodium, potassium, magnesium, and aluminum, aluminum-based batteries stand out for their low cost and long cycle life, with some configurations lasting from hundreds to over 10,000 cycles. Aluminum-battery technology itself splits into three families: aluminum-air, aluminum-ion, and aluminum-sulfur batteries. Of these, the aluminum-air variant is particularly notable for its theoretical energy density, which dwarfs that of conventional lithium-ion cells.

The architecture of an aluminum-air battery is deceptively simple. It comprises an aluminum anode, a porous air cathode, an alkaline electrolyte, and a separator that physically isolates the electrodes while permitting the passage of ions. The air cathode is typically a composite structure including a gas diffusion layer to manage gas transport while preventing electrolyte leakage, alongside a current collector to ensure electron transfer to the external circuit. During discharge, atmospheric oxygen diffuses into the porous cathode and reaches the triple-phase boundary, where gas, liquid electrolyte, and solid catalyst meet. The efficiency of the entire battery is dictated by the pathway of the oxygen reduction reaction, or ORR. The ideal route is the direct four-electron pathway, which reduces oxygen cleanly to hydroxide ions. Alternatively, a kinetically sluggish two-electron pathway may take place, leading to the formation of peroxide intermediates that degrade performance.

Meanwhile, at the anode, hydroxide ions migrate through the electrolyte toward the aluminum, which is oxidized to form aluminum hydroxide while releasing electrons to the external circuit. Here lies one of the central paradoxes of the technology: the very product of the battery’s operation, solid aluminum hydroxide, accumulates on the anode surface and becomes a detrimental physical barrier. This passivation layer hinders the continuous diffusion of hydroxide ions to the active aluminum surface and blocks further electron transfer, ultimately impeding the electrochemical reaction and degrading battery performance. The aluminum anode is also prone to parasitic corrosion in the alkaline electrolyte, which wastes the metal even when the battery is not delivering current. Together, corrosion and self-passivation reduce the effective utilization of aluminum, undermining the theoretical advantages that make the chemistry so attractive.

On the cathode side, the review highlights metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs, as a class of materials that has emerged as a promising solution to the sluggish ORR. MOFs are porous crystalline structures synthesized through hydrothermal methods, where metal ions such as iron are coordinated with organic ligands. Their high surface area and hierarchical porosity optimize the triple-phase boundary, facilitating oxygen diffusion and electrolyte ion transport. MOFs also modulate the Gibbs free energy of oxygenated intermediates, optimizing adsorption and desorption steps and favoring the four-electron pathway. Typically, these materials exhibit half-wave potentials of about 0.80 to 0.90 volts versus the reversible hydrogen electrode and electron transfer numbers approaching 4.0, indicating efficient ORR kinetics comparable to platinum supported on conductive carbon, the commercial benchmark catalyst.

Because pristine MOFs suffer from intrinsically low electrical conductivity, recent research has focused on MOF-derived materials obtained through pyrolysis, which transforms the organic ligands into conductive graphitic carbon while preserving the topological features and dispersing metal nanoparticles. The review describes several categories. MOF-derived carbon materials include a honeycomb-like composite of FeS and Fe3C nanoparticles embedded in nitrogen and sulfur dual-doped carbon, produced by pyrolysis of a single-crystal Fe-MOF, which exhibited a four-electron dominant ORR pathway and at least six hours of stability in alkaline media. Single-metal doped carbon catalysts, such as Fe-Nx active sites embedded in nitrogen-doped carbon matrices derived from Fe-ZIF-8 through melamine-assisted co-calcination, combine a high density of isolated active centers with hierarchical porosity, showing half-wave potentials close to 0.85 volts and performance comparable or superior to commercial Pt/C. Bimetallic-doped carbon catalysts exploit the synergistic effect between two metal centers, as demonstrated by a ZnCo-ZIF hybrid grown in situ on graphene oxide nanosheets, which showed enhanced ORR activity and improved electrical conductivity compared to the pristine framework.

However, the review is candid about the limitations of MOF-derived cathodes. The high-temperature pyrolysis process required for their synthesis is energy-intensive and challenging to scale for industrial production. The instability of active sites during extended alkaline operation can result in performance decline, and single-metal catalysts are frequently constrained by suboptimal adsorption energies of oxygen intermediates, while bimetallic systems may suffer from structural complexity and reduced long-term stability. Perhaps most critically, in an alkaline electrolyte the corrosive environment produced by the aluminum anode and the precipitation of solid aluminum hydroxide byproducts can obstruct the hierarchical porosity of the MOF-derived cathode, blocking oxygen diffusion and mass transport at the triple-phase boundary. The authors point to strategies such as flow-cell designs with circulating electrolytes to remove precipitates, along with hierarchical porous architectures that preserve efficient mass transport, as ways to mitigate this fouling.

On the anode side, protective coatings serve as physical barriers between the aluminum and the aggressive electrolyte, increasing polarization resistance and suppressing parasitic reactions while maintaining ionic transport. Polymer coatings, such as poly(tetrafluoroethylene), have been shown to reduce corrosion current density in alkaline electrolyte, extending the anode’s discharge duration to over 30 hours at 1 mA per square centimeter compared to approximately 5 hours for bare aluminum. Yet hydrophilic variants like poly(vinyl alcohol) tend to absorb water, swell, and eventually detach due to the accumulation of discharge products underneath, while hydrophobic polymers like PTFE and PVDF, despite providing superior corrosion protection, are electrically insulating and can impede ionic transport at high current densities, increasing ohmic losses. PVDF also remains susceptible to long-term chemical degradation through defluorination in strong alkaline environments.

Metal-oxide coatings offer an alternative anti-corrosion strategy, forming stable interfacial barriers that regulate aluminum dissolution while still allowing ionic transport across the interface. Transition metal oxides based on vanadium, manganese, and iron have been shown to significantly reduce corrosion rates, with iron-based coatings demonstrating exceptional 5-volt high-voltage stability by forming robust interfacial compounds involving Fe-F and Al-N bonds that lower the corrosion rate by nearly three orders of magnitude. Carbon-based coatings, meanwhile, create a conductive porous interfacial layer that inhibits oxide formation and minimizes the adherence of aluminum hydroxide, allowing sedimentation while ensuring continuous diffusion of hydroxide ions to the aluminum surface. Carbon black coatings on commercial aluminum alloys have extended the anode’s discharge duration threefold and achieved specific capacities up to 1,210 mAh per gram by keeping the surface electrochemically active, improving electron transfer and reducing charge transfer resistance. Still, highly porous carbon types such as pyrolytic graphite can entrap discharge products within their pores, ultimately obstructing electrolyte access, and carbon coatings exhibit weak adhesion to aluminum.

The review’s conclusion is that no single-component coating can simultaneously provide protection, transport, and stability, and that future research should focus on multifunctional composite coatings, such as polymer-oxide or carbon-oxide hybrids, to synergistically balance corrosion resistance, conductivity, and durability. More broadly, the authors argue that the development of aluminum-air batteries is hampered by research gaps that span the full cell. Degradation byproducts from anode coatings, such as dissolved metal oxides or defluorinated polymers, may migrate and deactivate sensitive ORR catalytic sites at the cathode, meaning that a well-protected anode cannot mitigate cathode deactivation. Conversely, a highly active cathode cannot compensate for rapid electrolyte depletion. Scaling the energy-intensive pyrolysis of MOFs without causing structural variations between batches remains a major industrial obstacle. The authors call for full-cell integration studies that treat the anode, cathode, and electrolyte as an interconnected system rather than isolated components. If these challenges can be overcome, aluminum-air batteries could finally translate their remarkable theoretical energy density into practical, low-cost energy storage for renewable energy systems.

Subject of Research: Challenges and strategies for aluminum-air batteries

Article Title: Challenges and strategies for aluminum-air batteries

Article References: Muñiz-Torres, L. F., Morelos-Santos, O., Ray, A., & Caballero-Briones, F. (2026). Challenges and strategies for aluminum-air batteries. Frontiers in Batteries and Electrochemistry, 5, Article 1842273. https://doi.org/10.3389/fbael.2026.1842273

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fbael.2026.1842273

Keywords: Challenges, strategies, aluminum-air, batteries, scientific research, peer-reviewed research

The software, published in the journal SoftwareX and available under a BSD-3-Clause license on GitHub, tackles a long-standing tension in battery modelling. On one side are equivalent circuit models, or ECMs—the simple electrical representations that dominate both academic research and real-world battery management systems. They treat a battery as a network of voltage sources, resistors, and capacitors, which makes them computationally cheap enough to embed in the microcontrollers of a battery management system, or BMS, where they handle safety, charge control, and diagnosis of the state of charge and state of health. On the other side are detailed physicochemical models, such as the famous Newman-type models, which resolve the electrochemistry of both electrodes but at a computational cost that rules out long-term simulation and embedded use. LIBquiv, developed by Jonas A. Braun, David Schmider, Simon Schwab, Patricia O. Mmeka, and Wolfgang G. Bessler, is designed to bridge that gap.

The key innovation is what the developers call physics-informed equivalent circuit models. Instead of a generic resistor labelled R1, LIBquiv allows users to specify separate resistances for the positive and negative electrodes, each of which can be parameterized as a function of current, temperature, or lithium stoichiometry. This electrode-resolved structure means that a purely electrical model suddenly carries electrochemical knowledge: the model components are chosen and parameterized according to the underlying physicochemical processes, while the computational complexity remains low. The framework also supports a core-shell particle diffusion model, capturing the transport dynamics that occur inside battery particles, and a hysteresis model that reproduces the voltage memory effects typical of lithium iron phosphate chemistry.

Temperature, which has a strong impact on battery operation and aging, is handled through a zero-dimensional thermal equivalent circuit. The thermal submodel tracks cell temperature using a heat capacity and heat transfer resistance, and it computes both reversible heat generation—derived from the entropy of the electrode materials—and irreversible heat generation from ohmic losses in the resistive elements. This coupling of electrical and thermal behavior in a single lightweight model is what allows LIBquiv to reproduce the strongly nonlinear thermal signatures observed in real cells, such as the large-format 150 ampere-hour LFP prismatic cell from the manufacturer Eikto used as a first demonstration case.

From the user’s perspective, LIBquiv is deliberately simple. The object-oriented implementation lets researchers operate a virtual battery object much as they would operate a real cell on a test bench. One-line commands initiate constant-current, constant-voltage, or constant-power operation, complete with cut-off criteria expressed as logic strings such as a minimum voltage or a maximum temperature. The class tracks simulation time, so multiple operations can be chained sequentially—the final state of one simulation becomes the initial state of the next—allowing complex protocols, like the CCCV charge-rest-discharge-rest sequence demonstrated in the examples, to be assembled as easily as programming a battery cycler. The full thermo-electrical simulation of the 150 Ah Eikto cell runs in just 0.27 seconds on a laptop.

Mathematically, LIBquiv represents the battery as a modular system of coupled time-dependent nonlinear differential-algebraic equations, typically of low order, solved simultaneously by standard MATLAB solvers. Each submodel—electrical, diffusion, hysteresis, aging, thermal—can be individually activated through dedicated parameters, so the mathematical complexity of the model can be adapted to the simulation task at hand. The developers caution that this flexibility comes with a trade-off: activating additional submodels introduces additional state variables and parameters that must be determined experimentally, so model predictions ultimately depend on the quality of the underlying parameterization. Model complexity, they advise, should be selected according to the intended application and the available data.

Perhaps the most striking demonstration is battery aging. Because of the low computational effort, LIBquiv can simulate months or years of battery performance, and because the models are physics-informed, degradation can be described using the concept of degradation modes—loss of lithium inventory and loss of active material. The team developed, parameterized, and validated an aging model for a cylindrical 3.35 Ah nickel cobalt oxide cell from Panasonic. A 650-hour aging simulation took only 139 seconds, and the results did more than reproduce the macroscopic capacity loss and resistance increase: they revealed the underlying degradation modes, showing that the notorious nonlinear aging knee in these cells arises from the interaction between internal resistance growth and lithium plating. That kind of interpretability—understanding not just that a battery degrades but why—is exactly what purely electrical models cannot deliver.

LIBquiv also opens the door to a novel diagnostic approach known as voltage-controlled modelling. Conventional simulations take current as input and predict voltage; LIBquiv can do the reverse, using measured cell voltage as the independent variable and simulating the current response along with the internal state of charge. The team demonstrated this on a 20 Ah lithium-ion pouch cell from Enertech, using measured voltage from a dynamic driving-cycle profile as model input. The simulated current agreed closely with the experimental data, allowing the state of charge to be inferred from internal model states without requiring measured current at all. The full diagnosis over 18,000 data points took just 7.92 seconds. Because modern vehicles and devices already log voltage continuously, this formulation could lead to innovative algorithms for diagnosing capacity, resistance, and even the open-circuit voltage curve of batteries in the field.

The software landscape for equivalent circuit simulation is crowded, spanning open-source projects in Python, C++, and MATLAB as well as commercial environments such as MathWorks Simscape Battery, Siemens Simcenter Amesim, and GT-SUITE. But according to the developers, no existing lightweight time-domain implementation combines electrode-resolved physics-informed models, hysteresis, degradation-mode-based aging, thermal behavior, and voltage-controlled simulation within a unified and intuitive framework. LIBquiv’s distinguishing feature is therefore not a single new circuit topology but the integration of multiple diagnostic and physicochemical extensions in one modular, computationally efficient package. The code has been tested with MATLAB R2019a, R2023b, and R2025b, and a reproducible capsule is archived on Zenodo.

The impact of the release extends across theory and practice. On the theoretical side, LIBquiv enables high-fidelity modelling and understanding-based interpretation of simulation results while remaining fast enough for long-term aging studies and parameter sweeps. On the practical side, the split architecture—model scripts separated from simulation scripts—mirrors the typical workflow of computational battery research and allows models to be exchanged easily between studies. Fully parameterized models of commercial cells ship with the code, and all three demonstration cases, from the thermo-electrical behavior of a large LFP cell to lifetime prediction and state-of-charge diagnosis, are provided in the GitHub repository and can be reproduced directly. For a field racing to electrify transport and stabilize grids with billions of cells, a free tool that makes battery models more physical, more transparent, and more accessible may prove to be one of the quiet catalysts of the energy transition.

Subject of Research: LIBquiv: An open-source MATLAB class for time-domain simulation of physics-informed equivalent circuit models of lithium-ion batteries

Article Title: LIBquiv: An open-source MATLAB class for time-domain simulation of physics-informed equivalent circuit models of lithium-ion batteries

Article References: Braun, J. A., Schmider, D., Schwab, S., Mmeka, P. O., & Bessler, W. G. (2026). LIBquiv: An open-source MATLAB class for time-domain simulation of physics-informed equivalent circuit models of lithium-ion batteries. SoftwareX, 36, Article 103088. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.softx.2026.103088

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.softx.2026.103088

Keywords: LIBquiv, open-source, MATLAB, class, time-domain, simulation, physics-informed, equivalent, circuit, models, lithium-ion, batteries

The chemistry behind lithium’s battery dominance explains why the stakes are so high. Lithium, discovered in 1817 by Johan Arfvedson, is a silver-white metal with an atomic weight of 6.93 that never occurs naturally in metallic form because of its violent reactivity with air. Its low standard reduction potential makes it the lightest metal suitable for high-density, high-voltage cells, the property that underpins every lithium-ion battery in an electric vehicle or grid-scale storage installation. Global demand for the element has been growing at roughly 20 percent annually, driven by the electrification of transport and the expansion of renewable energy storage, and the review notes that this trajectory is likely to continue as countries race toward decarbonization targets.

Geologically, lithium concentrates in three principal reservoir types: continental brines trapped in salt flats known as salars, hard-rock pegmatites, and sedimentary clay deposits. The South American Lithium Triangle spanning Bolivia, Chile and Argentina holds approximately 56 percent of the world’s lithium resources and 52 percent of its reserves in brine form, offering low extraction costs but raising serious socio-environmental concerns over water depletion in arid regions. Australia, by contrast, dominates hard-rock production, mining spodumene from pegmatite bodies that formed during ancient supercontinent cycles. Sedimentary clay deposits, found in lacustrine basins across North America, Europe and China, remain less exploited but carry high development potential. Global lithium resources are estimated to exceed 62 million tons, suggesting no imminent shortage of the element itself, though production may be constrained by environmental and social factors rather than geology.

Pegmatites, the deposit type most relevant to Nigeria, are coarse-grained igneous rocks classified as lithium-cesium-tantalum, or LCT, ores. They are among the oldest lithium deposits on Earth, dated to roughly 3,000 to 3,100 million years, and are associated with continental crust formation at the onset of plate tectonics. Within these rocks, lithium resides in minerals such as spodumene, lepidolite, petalite, amblygonite and zinnwaldite, interlocked with quartz, feldspar and mica. Spodumene is particularly prized for its high lithium content and economic value, though its composition varies with trace elements including iron, manganese, gallium and tin. The formation mechanisms are equally varied, involving interactions between lithium-rich magmatic-hydrothermal fluids and sedimentary clays, or the adsorption of lithium by clay minerals from lithium-bearing brines.

Nigeria’s lithium endowment sits within the country’s Precambrian Basement Complex, a foundation of crystalline igneous and metamorphic rocks interspersed with Cretaceous and Cenozoic sedimentary basins. The lithium-bearing pegmatites occur as steeply inclined intrusive bodies within gneisses and schistose assemblages, and they carry not only lithium but also tantalum, niobium, tin and beryllium. The review maps a Lithium Belt, a pegmatite metallogenic province trending west-southwest to east-northeast across more than 700 kilometers, from Oyo State in the southwest to Plateau State in the north-central region. Significant deposits have been documented in Kogi, Nasarawa, Ekiti, Kwara, Cross River, Oyo and Plateau States, with twenty named deposit sites ranging from Panda and Wamba in Nasarawa to Ilesha in Osun and Kafanchan in Kaduna.

The analytical data emerging from these deposits is remarkable. Energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence analysis conducted under the Nigerian Ministry of Mines and Steel Development found lithium oxide contents averaging 9.53 weight percent at Panda, 8.69 percent at both Wamba and Kabba, and 9.34 percent at Isanlu Egbe, values the authors describe as far above the highest percentages of lithium oxide in spodumene reported globally. Even the comparatively modest Kushaka deposit at 3.51 percent qualifies as an economic source when appropriate beneficiation is applied. Froth flotation trials demonstrated the transformative power of mineral processing: lithium oxide in Kushaka concentrates rose from 3.51 to 34.51 weight percent, while Panda concentrates climbed from 9.53 to 37.96 percent, accompanied by sharp reductions in the silica gangue that dilutes the ore.

Turning ore into battery-grade material, however, demands a sophisticated processing chain. The conventional route begins with mining and comminution, the crushing and grinding that liberates lithium minerals from their host rock, followed by froth flotation, which exploits differences in surface properties to separate spodumene or lepidolite from quartz and feldspar. The concentrate is then roasted to convert lithium minerals into water-soluble compounds; sulfuric acid roasting at 750 degrees Celsius, for example, converts lithium oxide into lithium sulfate that dissolves readily in water. Leaching follows, with acid solutions selectively dissolving lithium before purification and precipitation as lithium carbonate. Emerging alternatives promise cleaner routes: electrochemical extraction using lithium iron phosphate electrodes can pull lithium ions directly from brines and even seawater, while calcination-leaching with oxalic acid has achieved 91.35 percent recovery from lithium-bearing clays, and electrochemical leaching of spodumene with hydrogen peroxide reached 92.2 percent efficiency.

Nigeria’s processing capacity remains nascent. Large-scale primary lithium processing only began in 2023, when Ganfeng Lithium Industry Ltd commenced operations, followed by Avatar New Energy Materials Company Ltd, which opened a facility in Nasarawa State with a daily capacity of 4,000 tons and an estimated investment of 100 million US dollars. The facility is projected to generate 500 million dollars in revenue over a 15-to-20-year mining lifespan and aligns with Nigeria’s ambition to become Africa’s solar and battery energy storage hub. Yet the review cautions that full-scale processing at these sites remains uncertain, and that foreign investors dominate the lithium processing space, raising questions about whether local value addition will materialize without indigenous investment and research into African-adapted extraction and purification technologies.

The environmental shadow of lithium mining looms large over this opportunity. Unregulated extraction can drive chemical leaching, water depletion and contamination, air pollution and soil degradation, with public health consequences the authors compare to the devastation of oil spills and gas flaring in the Niger Delta. Lithium processing is energy-intensive, contributing to carbon emissions, and mining wastes from granite-pegmatite operations can carry ecological risks due to uranium and thorium. In water-scarce regions, extracting lower-grade brines carries particularly high environmental costs. The review argues that integrating environmental, social and governance considerations, alongside battery recycling through hydrometallurgical methods and dynamic policy modeling, will be essential if Nigeria’s lithium boom is to avoid replicating the failures of its extractive past.

The path forward, the authors conclude, requires simultaneous progress on several fronts: comprehensive geological surveys using advanced geophysical tools such as airborne magnetic and radiometric mapping, which remain unapplied to Nigerian lithium exploration; sustainable investment in mining infrastructure; and a research-industry-government-community nexus capable of developing the full lithium value chain from ore to battery. Government initiatives, including the Electronic Mining Cadastre System for transparent mineral title management and the reactivated Solid Minerals Development Fund in partnership with the Africa Finance Corporation, signal political will, though enforcement against illegal mining, which has been linked to banditry and corruption, remains inconsistent. With proper investment and regulatory frameworks, the review concludes, Nigeria could become a significant lithium supplier, converting a poorly documented geological endowment into a cornerstone of the global transition toward clean energy.

Subject of Research: Geology, mineralogy and processing of Nigerian lithium ore deposits for energy applications

Article Title: Mechanistic insights into nigerian lithium ores: implications for energy and industrial applications

Article References: Olajuyi, S. I., Adamu, H. A., Ogunmodimu, O. S., & Afolayan, D. O. (2025). Mechanistic insights into nigerian lithium ores: implications for energy and industrial applications. Frontiers in Geochemistry, 3, Article 1659636. https://doi.org/10.3389/fgeoc.2025.1659636

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fgeoc.2025.1659636

Keywords: lithium, Nigeria, pegmatites, spodumene, lepidolite, batteries, energy transition, mineral processing, froth flotation, LCT pegmatites, clean energy, mining

Among the most striking contributions is a study by Myeong and colleagues that reimagines one of the most overlooked components in a lithium-ion cell: the current collector. Conventionally treated as a passive piece of aluminum foil whose only job is to conduct electrons, the current collector in this work becomes an active safety device. The researchers coated the aluminum foil with melamine polyphosphate, a flame-retardant compound, creating what they describe as a fire-extinguishing current collector. When the coating composition is properly optimized, the layer reduces the self-extinguishing time of a cell undergoing thermal runaway while preserving electrochemical performance. The significance lies in the strategy itself. Rather than reformulating the bulk electrolyte with flame-retardant additives, which can degrade cell performance, the team localized the safety functionality directly at the electrode architecture level. The current collector, in other words, becomes a multifunctional component that improves abuse tolerance without exacting a performance penalty.

Safety through structural innovation also drives a complementary contribution from Wang and co-workers, who engineered a composite solid-state electrolyte for sodium metal batteries. Their material combines a PVDF polymer matrix with a NASICON-type ceramic filler of the composition Na3.7Zr1.45Sc0.4Mg0.15Si2PO12. The optimized electrolyte establishes multiple ion-transport channels, achieving improved room-temperature ionic conductivity, a higher sodium-ion transference number, and better interfacial compatibility with the electrodes. Full cells built with this electrolyte showed strong capacity retention and long-term cycling stability. The work illustrates a broader maturation in solid-state sodium research: progress is coming less from raw conductivity improvements alone and more from careful interfacial design. It also underscores why sodium is attracting growing attention as a lower-cost alternative to lithium, both for stationary grid storage and, potentially, for transport applications.

While safety and interfaces dominate the experimental side of the collection, a different kind of breakthrough appears in the work of Tham and colleagues, who deployed high-throughput computational screening to hunt for new cathode materials for anode-free aqueous zinc batteries. Starting from a pool of more than 1,000 candidate compounds, the team systematically down-selected using a battery of criteria: thermodynamic stability, electrical conductivity, voltage window, stability in aqueous environments, and ion diffusion kinetics. The funnel narrowed to six promising compounds, including ZnNi5Zn4MnO5. The study is a textbook example of how first-principles databases and structured screening pipelines can compress years of trial-and-error experimentation into a computational search. Just as importantly, the work produced design rules linking chemical composition to electrochemical performance, rules that can guide future experimental validation and accelerate materials discovery across the emerging zinc chemistry landscape.

The computational perspective is balanced by a broader strategic assessment from Khan, whose mini-review on sodium-ion batteries frames why the technology continues to attract global investment. Sodium is abundant, inexpensive, and well suited to large-scale storage, but the review is candid about the obstacles that remain. The larger ionic radius of the sodium ion causes greater volume change during cycling, kinetics are comparatively sluggish, and the formation of a stable solid-electrolyte interphase remains problematic. Khan’s conclusion is measured: sodium-ion batteries are highly promising but still require coordinated advances in cathodes, anodes, electrolytes, and separators before reaching full commercial maturity. It is a reminder that in battery science, no single component breakthrough is sufficient; the entire cell must advance together.

Perhaps the most commercially urgent finding in the collection concerns manufacturing rather than chemistry. Lee and colleagues compared dry and wet coating methods for nickel-rich NCM811 cathodes, the high-energy layered oxide materials at the heart of many modern electric vehicle cells. Their results revealed that the coating route itself profoundly shapes surface degradation and, ultimately, cell durability. Wet coating, despite being the conventional industry approach, exposes the cathode surface to water, promoting the formation of a NiO-like surface phase. That phase accelerates cation mixing and resistance growth, quietly eroding performance over the cell’s life. Dry coating, by contrast, suppresses the unwanted phase formation and delivers better capacity retention and rate capability. The lesson is timely: as nickel content climbs in pursuit of higher energy density, the manufacturing process itself becomes as important as the material composition. Performance losses can originate not only from intrinsic material instability but from process-induced surface chemistry.

At the system level, the collection turns to the digital frontier. Madani and colleagues present an expansive review of digital twin technologies for battery systems, charting the emergence of virtual replicas that integrate physics-based modeling, machine learning, cloud-edge computing, and battery management functions. The applications they survey span electric vehicles, stationary storage, production lines, thermal management, state estimation, predictive maintenance, fault diagnosis, and end-of-life handling. Crucially, the review frames digital twins as multiscale entities, spanning everything from cell-level materials to full packs and grid-scale systems. The authors also identify the barriers that stand in the way of widespread adoption: standardization, cybersecurity, computational load, and data quality. Their central message is one of the most important in the entire collection: future battery performance will not be determined by electrochemical materials alone, but by the intelligence of the digital infrastructure that monitors and controls batteries throughout their lifecycle.

Taken together, the papers sketch a coherent map of where the field is heading. Interfaces remain decisive, whether in nickel-rich layered oxides, sodium metal solid-state cells, or flame-retardant current collectors, because interfacial chemistry controls not only capacity fade but also safety and abuse response. Processing matters as much as composition, as the dry-versus-wet coating comparison demonstrates, with subtle differences in synthesis route producing major changes in surface phase evolution and electrochemical behavior. Sodium and zinc chemistries are gaining strategic importance, offering resource and cost advantages and pathways toward aqueous, potentially safer batteries, both benefiting from improved modeling and interface engineering. And digitalization is becoming foundational, connecting electrochemistry with sensing, prediction, and operational control to enable smarter charging, improved health estimation, and lifecycle optimization.

The overarching trajectory is unmistakable. The battery community is moving beyond isolated component optimization toward integrated design across materials, processes, architectures, and cyber-physical control. The editors argue that the future of advanced batteries will likely belong to approaches that combine these domains: safer interfaces, scalable manufacturing, chemistry-aware materials discovery, and intelligent management systems working in concert. As electrification accelerates across transport and grid storage, the cells that succeed will be those designed not as isolated electrochemical devices but as holistic systems, engineered from the atomic interface to the cloud-connected digital twin. This collection offers a strong snapshot of that transition and points toward a more integrated, application-ready era in electrochemical energy storage.

Subject of Research: Recent advances in battery and electrochemistry research spanning safety design, solid-state electrolytes, computational materials discovery, cathode processing, and digital twin systems

Article Title: Editorial: Reviews in batteries and electrochemistry volume II

Article References: Johnson, C., Kim, J. H., & Cheng, Y.-T. (2026). Editorial: Reviews in batteries and electrochemistry volume II. Frontiers in Batteries and Electrochemistry, 5, Article 1985379. https://doi.org/10.3389/fbael.2026.1985379

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fbael.2026.1985379

Keywords: batteries, electrochemistry, lithium-ion, sodium-ion batteries, solid-state electrolytes, zinc batteries, current collector, digital twin, cathode coating, materials discovery, battery safety, energy storage

The research, published in the journal Magnetic Resonance, describes a workflow that combines finite element method simulations with quantum optimal control, a mathematical technique for sculpting radiofrequency pulses with extraordinary finesse. Instead of trying to cancel out the magnetic havoc wreaked by conductive components, the researchers designed custom pulses that exploit those distortions to excite only specific regions of a sample. In a proof-of-concept experiment, they achieved more than a thirtyfold suppression of an unwanted signal, demonstrating spatial selectivity without any of the magnetic field gradients that conventional imaging requires.

To understand why this matters, it helps to grasp what NMR actually measures. The technique relies on two magnetic fields working in concert. The first, the static field B0, causes atomic nuclei to precess at a characteristic frequency called the Larmor frequency, which acts like a fingerprint revealing the chemical identity of each molecule. The second, an oscillating radiofrequency field B1, tips the nuclear spins so that their signal can be detected. In a clean glass tube of liquid, both fields are well behaved. Inside an electrochemical cell, they are anything but.

Metal electrodes generate eddy currents when exposed to changing magnetic fields, and these currents in turn produce their own magnetic fields that interfere with the measurement. Susceptibility gradients at material interfaces warp the static field, broadening spectral lines and shifting resonance frequencies. The radiofrequency field is attenuated and phase-shifted near conductors through the skin effect, meaning that a pulse calibrated to work perfectly in one part of the cell will deliver the wrong flip angle a fraction of a millimeter away. Conventional selective pulses, such as the widely used BURP family of shaped pulses, simply were never designed for an environment this hostile.

Previous work had shown that these distortions, while troublesome, are at least predictable. Finite element method simulations can accurately reproduce how B0 and B1 fields behave around conductors of various shapes and orientations, and researchers have used this capability to design cells with more uniform fields. The Jülich team, led by Johannes F. Kochs and corresponding author Simone S. Köcher, took a different tack: rather than engineering the distortions away, they built them into the pulse design itself. The key tool was quantum optimal control, specifically the GRAPE algorithm, which uses gradient-based optimization to find pulse shapes that drive a spin system to a desired final state.

The researchers employed a variant known as pattern pulses, in which the optimization runs simultaneously across an entire ensemble of simulated spin systems, each representing a different combination of Larmor frequency and nutation frequency. By assigning different target states to different ensemble elements, the algorithm learns to excite some combinations of fields while suppressing others. The resulting pulses were remarkably efficient: a one-millisecond excitation pulse achieved a mean quality factor of nearly 95 percent across its entire design space, and suppression pulses reached similar performance when extended to two milliseconds.

To test the concept experimentally, the team built an elegant model setup inside a shortened 5-millimeter NMR tube. Two tiny cavities, each just 0.1 millimeters tall, were sandwiched between pairs of coins. One pair was copper, mimicking the conductive environment of a real electrode; the other was polyether ether ketone, a polymer serving as a distortion-free reference. The cavities were filled with two immiscible liquids, n-dodecane in the copper cavity and water in the polymer cavity, chosen so that their signals could be distinguished both by chemical shift and by position.

The results were striking. When the team applied frequency-selective pulses tuned to the water resonance, the water signal was excited efficiently while the n-dodecane signal fell to less than 5 percent of its original value, and vice versa. With longer suppression pulses, unwanted resonances could be driven down to around 1 percent of their reference intensity. Crucially, these pulses remained robust against the nutation frequency variations caused by the nearby copper, something conventional selective pulses could not manage. A direct comparison with a standard E-BURP pulse showed baseline distortions and poor selectivity in the same setup, underscoring how much the optimal control approach gains in conductive environments.

The more visionary result, however, came from inverting the logic. Instead of selecting by frequency, the team designed pulses that select by nutation frequency, exploiting the fact that the radiofrequency field is measurably stronger near metal. Finite element simulations predicted a 25.7 percent enhancement of B1 in the copper cavity, and nutation experiments measured 25.6 percent, an agreement to within a tenth of a percent. Pulses optimized for that specific enhancement selectively excited the liquid near the copper while suppressing the reference liquid, achieving spatial selectivity entirely without magnetic field gradients. Because the selectivity depends on the surrounding material rather than on chemical shift, it works even when different regions of the sample contain the same molecule.

The implications reach well beyond the laboratory bench. Electrochemical reactions happen at interfaces, precisely where standard NMR is blindest, drowned out by bulk solvent signals and hampered by poor surface sensitivity. The new workflow opens a path toward gradient-free, localized in operando NMR, with the prospect of surface selectivity down to the detection limit of the instrument. The authors point to applications such as tracking intermediates during carbon dioxide electrolysis or probing the solid electrolyte interphase that forms inside lithium batteries, questions that individual techniques have struggled to answer alone. Challenges remain, particularly for porous electrodes and inhomogeneous catalyst layers whose field distortions shift during operation. But the core message of the study is a genuinely subversive one for the field: the magnetic field distortions that have plagued electrochemical NMR for fifty years are not merely obstacles to be tolerated. Designed for correctly, they are features waiting to be exploited.

Subject of Research: Quantum optimal control NMR pulse design for spatially selective spectroscopy in electrochemical cells

Article Title: Optimally controlled nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) in electrochemistry: Larmor versus nutation frequency selective spin excitation for locally selective NMR experiments

Article References: Kochs, J. F., Römer, A. J., Schatz, M., Streun, M., Jovanovic, S., Eichel, R.-A., Köcher, S. S., & Granwehr, J. (2026). Optimally controlled nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) in electrochemistry: Larmor versus nutation frequency selective spin excitation for locally selective NMR experiments. Magnetic Resonance, 7(2), 113-123. https://doi.org/10.5194/mr-7-113-2026

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.5194/mr-7-113-2026

Keywords: NMR spectroscopy, electrochemistry, quantum optimal control, GRAPE algorithm, finite element simulation, radiofrequency pulses, magnetic field distortion, in operando, batteries, fuel cells, solvent suppression, spatial selectivity

The device, which the team calls a biohybrid mesh harvester, addresses what many in the field consider the single most difficult problem in wearable and implantable electronics: how to get rid of the battery altogether. Batteries, for all their ubiquity, impose a punishing set of trade-offs. They are bulky, they eventually run out of charge, and shrinking them or making them flexible enough to conform to living tissue reduces the amount of energy they can store. For implanted devices, that means larger surgeries, shorter device lifetimes and a constant negotiation between power and size. The UMass Amherst team, led by senior author Jun Yao, an associate professor in the university’s Riccio College of Engineering, argues that the solution is not to build a better battery but to abandon the centralized energy paradigm that batteries represent.

That paradigm shift begins with a simple observation about how the human body is powered. Every battery-powered device relies on a single, centralized reservoir of energy that is distributed outward to wherever it is needed. The body does the opposite. Each of the trillions of cells in a human body is, in effect, its own miniature power plant, generating energy continuously and distributing it throughout the entire system. Some of that power takes electrical form, most visibly in the nerve impulses that race through the nervous system, and some takes mechanical form, as in the rhythmic contraction of muscle tissue. “Our bodies are 24/7 power plants,” says lead author Siqi Wang, a Ph.D. student in the Riccio College of Engineering. “Every single cell produces its own power.”

Capturing that distributed cellular energy required the researchers to rethink electrical engineering from the ground up. “We wanted to shift this traditional, centralized paradigm to something more distributed and modeled on biology,” Yao says. The result is a device architecture in which energy generation is not a separate component bolted onto the body but a property woven into the tissue itself. The mesh does not sit beside the cells it powers; it grows with them, moves with them and harvests their mechanical activity as its fuel.

The construction of the harvester reflects that philosophy. The team began with an array of thin ribbons of lead zirconate titanate, or PZT, a piezoelectric ceramic well known for its ability to convert mechanical energy into electrical energy. Piezoelectric materials generate a voltage when they are deformed, which makes them natural candidates for harvesting the mechanical work performed by contracting muscle. The challenge was that conventional piezoelectric devices tend to be stiff and brittle — the opposite of what living tissue tolerates. The researchers therefore devised a technique for transferring the PZT ribbons onto an ultrathin, ultraflexible polymer platform, creating a scaffold that could bend and flex without losing its energy-converting function.

The next step is what makes the device truly biohybrid. The researchers seeded the PZT-loaded polymer platform with human cardiac cells and allowed them to grow. As the cells proliferated, they meshed seamlessly into and around the piezoelectric ribbons, enveloping the platform in living tissue. The finished device moves and looks like human tissue but works like a battery that never needs to be replaced. Every beat of the cultured cardiac cells deforms the embedded PZT ribbons, and every deformation is converted into usable electrical energy. The power source and the power consumer are, in effect, the same living system.

The performance figures reported by the team are striking. Yao, who is quick to emphasize that the research so far exists only in the laboratory, says the device generated ten times more power density — the amount of energy that can be produced in a given volume — than systems that rely on a centralized power source. That advantage arises precisely because the harvester is distributed: instead of one dense energy reservoir competing for space with the electronics and the tissue, energy is generated everywhere the device touches, from countless small conversion sites working in parallel.

And the design leaves room to grow. Because the harvesting films are ultrathin, they can be stacked in layers, drastically increasing the amount of power available while the device remains noninvasive. This stacking strategy means that power output is not fixed by the geometry of a single film but can be scaled up by adding layers, a flexibility that conventional implantable batteries, constrained by chemistry and packaging, cannot match. For applications that demand more energy — a more power-hungry sensor suite, a stimulator with higher output — the answer is simply more film, not a bigger implant.

Biocompatibility, often the quiet killer of implantable technologies, is another area where the distributed approach pays dividends. “The beauty of this system is how noninvasive and powerful it is,” Yao says. “Our bodies want to reject systems that come with bulk batteries, but when the device exists at the cellular level, you get vastly improved biocompatibility.” A device that is mechanically indistinguishable from the tissue around it avoids many of the immune and mechanical stresses that plague rigid implants, from inflammation to the formation of scar tissue that can degrade performance over time. By dissolving the boundary between device and tissue, the mesh harvester sidesteps problems that battery-centric designs have struggled with for generations.

The work builds on a broader research program by Yao’s group at UMass Amherst, which has been steadily assembling the pieces of a bioelectronics toolkit. Yao and colleagues previously demonstrated a bioelectronic mesh capable of growing with and monitoring cardiac tissue, an artificial neuron that can communicate directly with living human cells, and a technique for harvesting clean energy from the moisture in ambient air around the clock. The mesh harvester adds the missing element — power — to that toolkit, suggesting a future in which sensing, computation, communication and energy generation are all integrated into tissue-like devices that live comfortably within the body. If the laboratory results can be translated into clinical systems, the implications extend well beyond pacemakers: any electronic augmentation of human ability, from the mundane to the science-fictional, ultimately needs power, and the body itself may be the most elegant place to find it.

Subject of Research: Biohybrid piezoelectric mesh devices that harvest energy from living human cells to power implantable and wearable electronics

Article Title: The body electric: UMass Amherst researchers integrate electronics with human cells

Article References: The body electric: UMass Amherst researchers integrate electronics with human cells. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: biohybrid electronics, energy harvesting, piezoelectric, PZT, implantable devices, wearable electronics, cardiac cells, batteries, biocompatibility, UMass Amherst, Science Advances, power density

The core insight of the new study is deceptively simple. Different anions interact with surrounding materials in markedly different ways, and one of the most important determinants of that behaviour is how tightly each atom within the anion holds on to its electrons. An anion that readily shares electron density with a neighbouring electrode material will behave very differently in a battery than one that clings stubbornly to its charge. Until now, quantifying this so-called electron-donating tendency for a wide range of anions has required laborious, expensive laboratory experiments, one chemical at a time, which has slowed the pace of materials discovery considerably.

The University of East London team, working alongside their co-authors, attacked the problem with a two-pronged strategy combining experiment and computation. On the experimental side, they turned to X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, or XPS, a technique that works by firing X-rays at a material and carefully measuring the energies of the electrons that are knocked loose in the process. Because each element and each chemical bonding environment produces a characteristic signature, XPS allows researchers to identify precisely which atoms are present in a sample and, crucially, how those atoms are bonded to their neighbours. By examining the photoelectron spectra of anions interacting with battery-relevant surfaces, the team could read off directly how strongly specific atoms within each anion were gripping their electrons.

That measurement alone would have been a useful incremental advance, but the researchers went a step further. They then built computer models capable of recreating those spectroscopic measurements virtually, calibrating the simulations against the experimental XPS data until the two agreed. Once the computational framework was validated, it could be used to predict the electron-donating behaviour of anions that had never been measured in the laboratory, effectively generating a fast, inexpensive screening tool. In practical terms, this means chemists could evaluate thousands of candidate anions on a computer and shortlist only the most promising ones for physical synthesis and testing, dramatically reducing the time and cost that typically separate a good idea from a working material.

The team describes the resulting quantities as element-specific donor numbers for anions, a metric that captures, atom by atom, the willingness of a negatively charged species to share electron density with its environment. Donor numbers have a long history in chemistry as a way of ranking how strongly solvents and other species bind to central atoms, but extending the concept to individual atoms within anions, and grounding it in hard spectroscopic data rather than indirect inference, is what distinguishes the new work. The approach gives researchers a common, quantitative language for comparing anions that previously had to be assessed through scattered, experiment-specific observations.

The immediate application is battery chemistry, where the choice of anion in an electrolyte influences everything from ionic conductivity to the stability of the electrode-electrolyte interface and, ultimately, how many charge and discharge cycles a cell can survive before degrading. Fluorinated anions, for example, are prized in lithium-ion and next-generation lithium metal batteries precisely because of the way their electron-withdrawing behaviour shapes protective interphases on electrode surfaces. With a validated predictive model in hand, researchers designing such electrolytes can now reason about candidate anions in terms of measured and modelled electron-donation properties rather than relying on trial-and-error, focusing their efforts on the materials that show the most promise.

Dr Richard Matthews, Senior Lecturer of Physical and Computational Chemistry at the University of East London and co-author of the study, emphasised the wider significance of the advance. We now have a much clearer picture of how anions interact with other materials, and that opens up some exciting possibilities, he said. By being able to predict these interactions, we can focus our efforts on the materials that show the most promise for better batteries and beyond. His framing captures the essential economic argument behind the work: in a field where every new candidate material must traditionally pass through synthesis, characterisation and testing, any method that filters out dead ends on a computer can save months of effort and substantial research funding.

The implications, however, stretch well beyond the electrochemistry laboratory. The researchers note that the measurement-and-modelling workflow could eventually be scaled up into a comprehensive database spanning many different elements and bonding environments. Such a dataset would be a valuable raw material for machine learning and artificial intelligence systems, which thrive on large volumes of high-quality, consistently defined measurements. Trainable models fed with element-specific donor numbers could surface unexpected patterns in chemical behaviour, propose novel anion structures for synthesis, and generally compress the discovery cycle for a wide range of chemical processes, not only those relevant to energy storage but also catalysis, corrosion science and medicinal chemistry, where anion interactions play equally decisive roles.

The study also illustrates a broader trend in modern materials research, in which the boundary between measurement and prediction is becoming increasingly porous. Spectroscopy provides the ground truth that anchors computational models to reality, while the models extend the reach of a limited number of experiments to a vast space of unmeasured chemistry. This virtuous loop, in which each new experimental data point improves the accuracy of predictions across an entire chemical family, is quickly becoming the standard playbook for labs hoping to compete in the race toward improved batteries, including the solid-state systems and sodium-based chemistries that many companies and national programmes are pursuing as alternatives to today’s lithium-ion technology.

For now, the University of East London team and their collaborators have laid the foundation, publishing a peer-reviewed method that others can adopt, replicate and extend. The paper, titled Element-Specific Donor Numbers for Anions, appeared in the Journal of the American Chemical Society under the DOI 10.1021/jacs.6c06567. If the framework spreads as widely as its authors hope, the humble anion, long treated as an afterthought in popular discussions of battery technology, may finally receive the systematic, quantitative attention it deserves, and consumers could one day reap the benefits in devices that hold their charge longer, degrade more slowly and cost less to develop.

Subject of Research: Element-specific donor numbers for anions as a predictive tool for battery material discovery

Article Title: Scientists discover method that could lead to longer-lasting batteries

Article References: Scientists discover method that could lead to longer-lasting batteries. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: batteries, anions, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, University of East London, electrolytes, computational chemistry, machine learning, energy storage, materials science, donor numbers, chemical discovery, electrochemistry

The review systematically summarizes recent progress across the major 3D printing technologies used for energy storage applications, including direct ink writing, electrohydrodynamic printing, fused deposition modeling, stereolithography and binder jet printing. Particular emphasis is placed on the critical role of post-processing in regulating microstructural evolution, phase stability, interfacial bonding and electron and ion transport pathways. The authors, led by Xiaowen Zheng and Qing Sun, critically discuss how key sintering parameters such as temperature, dwell time and heating rate govern densification behavior and, ultimately, electrochemical performance. They also highlight emerging strategies involving rapid sintering, high-throughput experimentation and machine-learning-assisted optimization as promising approaches to accelerate process development and improve reproducibility.

The field traces its origins to 2013, when researchers used direct ink writing to fabricate the first interdigitated lithium-ion microbattery. Since then, battery components made with fused deposition modeling, electrohydrodynamic printing, stereolithography and binder jetting have been reported in rapid succession, spanning electrodes, electrolytes, separators and current collectors. The appeal of these approaches lies in the architectural freedom they provide. Hierarchical porosity can be engineered so that macropores facilitate electrolyte infiltration, mesopores enhance ion diffusion and micropores increase accessible surface area, collectively reducing transport resistance and improving rate performance. Complex geometries such as interdigitated, lattice and honeycomb structures can shorten ion transport pathways, while multi-material printing allows electrodes, electrolytes and current collectors to be integrated monolithically, minimizing interfacial contact resistance.

Yet the review stresses a fundamental mismatch: 3D printing primarily addresses spatial shaping rather than imparting electrochemical functionality. Electrochemical reactions and charge carrier transport occur at the nanoscale to microscale, far below the manufacturing resolution of most printing techniques. Printed green bodies generally exhibit high porosity, low density, substantial organic binders or photocurable resins, and insufficient interlayer bonding. Consequently, their electronic conductivity, ionic transport capability and mechanical strength often fail to meet the demands of battery applications. Among post-processing techniques, sintering is singled out as the most critical step, determining not only final densification and grain morphology but also the quality of interlayer adhesion, the evolution of porosity and the continuity of electronic and ionic transport pathways.

Each printing technique imposes its own post-processing requirements. Direct ink writing, the most widely applied and material-versatile method, relies on viscoelastic inks extruded through nozzles, with successful printing demanding carefully tuned rheological properties such as yield stress, shear thinning and thixotropic behavior. Electrohydrodynamic printing applies high voltage between nozzle and substrate, forming a Taylor cone that emits filaments one to two orders of magnitude finer than the nozzle itself, enabling micrometer and sub-micrometer deposition ideal for high-resolution electrode patterns and flexible substrates. Fused deposition modeling compounds active materials with thermoplastic binders into printable filaments, while stereolithography uses ultraviolet light to crosslink photosensitive resins loaded with active particles. Binder jetting selectively deposits liquid binders onto powder beds, accommodating ceramics, metals and multiphase composites without high temperatures or energy beams.

In every case, the printed structure must be transformed through curing, debinding and sintering. Pre-curing steps such as ultraviolet curing, freeze drying and solvent evaporation provide preliminary shape fixation before high-temperature treatment. Debinding, typically conducted between 200 and 600 degrees Celsius, thermally decomposes organic binders and releases them as gases, exposing functional particles and establishing initial interparticle contacts. Solvent debinding can complement this by selectively dissolving soluble binder fractions and creating interconnected pore channels that vent gaseous decomposition products, preventing blistering, cracking or large voids. Only after these stages can high-temperature sintering promote solid-state diffusion and particle necking, forming a densified skeleton with interconnected porosity and continuous transport networks.

The review devotes detailed attention to the four core dimensions of the sintering profile. Temperature governs atomic diffusion kinetics, crystal-phase transformation, grain growth, pore elimination and grain-boundary quality. Moderate elevation improves lattice ordering in intercalation-type oxide cathodes, while solid electrolytes such as LLZO and LATP require high temperatures to eliminate secondary phases, though overheating induces lithium volatilization and secondary phases that degrade ionic conductivity. Dwell time controls how far diffusion-driven processes progress, with insufficient holding leaving carbonaceous residues and trapped gases, and excessive holding causing abnormal grain coarsening. Heating rate determines how organic decomposition and gas release unfold, with rapid heating risking blistering and delamination, and the sintering atmosphere regulates defect chemistry, oxygen vacancy concentration and phase stability, with oxygen-rich conditions shown to suppress lithium oxide loss and stabilize the fast-ion-conducting cubic garnet phase.

Rapid sintering techniques are presented as a way to balance energy consumption, dimensional stability and compatibility with thermally sensitive materials. Field-assisted sintering applies pulsed direct current to generate intense Joule heating at particle microcontacts, enabling near-theoretical densities at lower furnace temperatures and shorter dwell times while suppressing excessive grain growth. Microwave sintering converts electromagnetic energy directly into heat within the material, achieving volumetric heating with rapid temperature rise and reduced thermal stress. Laser-assisted sintering uses focused beams for localized densification with a small heat-affected zone, making it compatible with polymer substrates and flexible current collectors. Emerging ultrafast high-temperature sintering and blacklight sintering, which achieve heating in milliseconds to seconds, have so far been limited to structural ceramics but could eventually accelerate the debinding-densification of battery electrodes and electrolytes.

Looking forward, the authors argue that no universal processing window exists because temperature, dwell time and heating rate are strongly interdependent and different printing techniques and material systems exhibit markedly different sintering tolerances. They advocate a shift from empirical optimization toward mechanism-guided design, coupled with high-throughput experimentation and machine learning. Machine-learning approaches, including Bayesian optimization workflows, can extract hidden relationships between sintering parameters, material structure and performance, capturing nonlinear interactions that conventional one-factor-at-a-time analyses miss. By coupling the parallel manufacturing capability of 3D printing with data-driven modeling in a closed loop of data, model and experiment, researchers can rapidly identify optimal sintering windows that balance densification, conductivity and structural stability. The review concludes that while 3D printing provides unprecedented structural design freedom, post-processing ultimately determines whether printed architectures become stable, high-performance electrochemical devices, and that continued advances in mechanistic understanding, rapid processing and data-driven optimization will position 3D printing as a viable manufacturing paradigm for next-generation energy storage.

Subject of Research: The role of printing technologies, post-processing and sintering in fabricating functional 3D-printed energy storage devices

Article Title: From printed architectures to functional batteries: printing technologies, post-processing, and sintering

Article References: Zheng, X., Mejia-Centeno, K. V., Khan, M. D., Cabot, A., & Sun, Q. (2026). From printed architectures to functional batteries: printing technologies, post-processing, and sintering. Advanced Materials Joining, 1(1), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44500-026-00002-3

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44500-026-00002-3

Keywords: 3D printing, batteries, sintering, direct ink writing, solid-state electrolytes, electrodes, additive manufacturing, debinding, machine learning, energy storage, post-processing, lithium-ion batteries