Finding the cause of capacity loss in a metal-oxide battery material

Because of their high energy-storage density, materials such as metal oxides, sulfides, and fluorides are promising electrode materials for lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles and other technologies. However, their capacity fades very rapidly. Now, scientists studying an electrode made of an inexpensive and nontoxic iron-oxide material called magnetite have proposed a scenario—described in the May 20 online issue of Nature Communications—that explains why.

* This article was originally published here