Flick 🇬🇧 on Nostr: > Lithium-ion batteries have become ubiquitous in recent years, powering phones, cars ...

https://www.acs.org/pressroom/presspacs/2023/march/crab-shells-could-help-power-the-next-generation-of-rechargeable-batteries.html

> Lithium-ion batteries have become ubiquitous in recent years, powering phones, cars and even toothbrushes. But because the amount of lithium metal in the world is limited, some researchers have turned their attentions to its “chemical cousins” instead. Previously, researchers created a biodegradable zinc-ion battery using the chitin in crab shells. But these wastes could alternatively be turned into “hard carbon,” a material that has been explored as a possible anode for sodium-ion batteries. Though chemically similar to lithium, sodium ions are larger, and thus incompatible with a lithium-ion battery’s anode, which is typically made of graphite. When hard carbon is combined with metallic semiconductor materials, such as the transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), the material can become a feasible battery anode. So, Yun Chen, Yue Zhao, Hongbin Liu and Tingli Ma wanted to explore how two different TMDs — tin sulfide and iron sulfide — could be combined with hard carbon made from crab shells to make a viable sodium-ion battery anode.