A new type of sustainable battery is made using water and clay, and researchers believe it could be the perfect option for future missions to Mars. The reason this battery is so impressive is because it does away with a lot of the traditional materials needed to create batteries, and instead relies on components that could easily be found on the Red Planet.
Typically, batteries are formed using metal for the electrodes and a lithium salt solution, which is all placed around the two electrodes—with one negative and one positive charge. However, this new battery was designed using two electrodes made of graphene, which were then placed in a solution of water and clay.
The real trick to this new sustainable battery is how it’s made. The layers of clay are full of small, microscopic channels that the researchers say are only around a nanometer thick. When those channels are filled with purified water, the liquid behaves quite surprisingly.
The reason this works is because the water is so confined that it basically becomes a “working fluid,” allowing for a separation to be created between the opposite charges as particles move between the two electrodes. This is what enables the battery to actually store energy.
Overall, the sustainable battery was able to produce up to 1.6 volts of energy and then be charged and completely drained for a total of 60,000 cycles without losing efficiency. That’s very impressive, especially for a battery made out of nothing more than clay and water.
The researchers say they made the design as simple as possible so that it could be used as broadly as possible—perhaps even beyond Earth, on a manned mission to Mars. The group has already produced an analysis of the types of clay believed to exist on Mars and found some viable options that would work with the design.
All of the details are highlighted in a paper prepublished on arXiv. Other battery tech breakthroughs have seen scientists create a stretchable battery that can be twisted and lengthened to fit almost any form.
