They are loading faster than ever, but there is still room for improvement. The fabrics from which they are made, adding cobalt and nickel, are expensive and problematic. The researchers worked to locate select tissues, from manganese to sodium. Now, they might have one: TAQ.
Unlike almost all other lithium-ion batteries, TAQ is a biological compound; Not the free-roaming hippie kind, but the kind more commonly made of carbon. The researchers studied biological tissues as cathodes, the negatively charged component of the cell, because they could store more energy at a lower price. But until now, candidate tissues haven’t been very durable because they tend to dissolve in liquid electrolytes commonly used in today’s industry.
The new curtain does not dissolve in two widely used electrolytes and has a power density 50% higher than one of the most widely used lithium-ion battery chemistries today, nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC).
TAQ, short for bis-tetraaminobenzoquinone, is composed of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen arranged in a row of 3 neighboring hexagons. The design is similar to that of graphite, which is now almost universally used as an anodic curtain (the terminal positive). Each molecule of TAQ is attracted by up to six other hydrogen bonds, which are not as strong as the other bonds but are enough to create a nearly flat sheet of substance that can overlap with the holes that store lithium ions.