India successfully develops the world's first iron-ion battery, will lithium-ion batteries be replaced in the future?

For the first time, researchers have successfully developed iron-ion battery technology, an important step in the long journey to replacing li-ion batteries (and reducing the exploitation of rare earths).

A team of researchers from the Madras Indian Institute of Technology has successfully created an iron-ion battery by using low carbon steel to make anodes, vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) as cathodes. V2O5 can move iron easily thanks to its large molecular distance. In addition, the researchers used iron chloride to make an electrode in an iron-ion battery.

Vanadium pentoxide structure and powder.

Compared with li-ion batteries, iron-ion batteries offer outstanding benefits including greater capacity, more stable structure and cheaper prices due to the more abundant battery manufacturing component than lithium.

Inside the iron-ion battery does not appear dendrite, the lithium fibers are likely to cause short-term li-ion battery, despite repeated charging-discharging process. Li-ion batteries are explosive in nature, so production must be done in a strictly controlled environment. Meanwhile, with iron-ion batteries one can assemble in conventional plants.

Currently, after going through 150 charge-discharge cycles, the iron-ion battery retains a decent capacity.

Perhaps we still have a long time to go before the first smartphone that uses iron-ion batteries comes into being, but we still have to use lithium-ion batteries.

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