Battery research at TU Graz: new breakthroughs in research on super-batteries

By Christoph Pelzl Researchers at TU Graz have discovered a means of suppressing singlet oxygen formation in lithium-oxygen batteries in order to extend their useful lives. Additional at the end of the text. Since 2012, Stefan Freunberger of the Institute for Chemistry and Technology of Materials at TU Graz has been working on development of a new generation of batteries with enhanced performance and longer useful lives, and which are also cheaper to produce than current models. He believes that lithium-oxygen batteries have significant potential. In 2017, in the course of his work, Freunberger uncovered parallels between cell ageing in living organisms and in batteries. In both cases, highly reactive singlet oxygen is responsible for the ageing process. This form of oxygen, which has been the focus of Freunberger's research over the past few years, is produced when lithium-oxygen batteries are charged or discharged.