🔋 Sodium-Based All-Solid-State Batteries: A Breakthrough for Room and Subzero Performance

Sodium-based battery breakthrough

As the global demand for renewable energy storage and electric vehicles accelerates, one of the biggest bottlenecks remains the availability and sustainability of lithium. Lithium-ion batteries dominate today’s market, but lithium extraction is costly, environmentally disruptive, and geopolitically sensitive. That’s why researchers are increasingly turning to sodium — a far more abundant and affordable element — to build the next generation of all-solid-state batteries.

In a landmark study published in Joule, scientists from the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, led by Professor Y. Shirley Meng, have demonstrated a sodium-based battery design that maintains high performance at both room temperature and subzero conditions. This advancement could mark a pivotal step in placing sodium batteries on par with lithium in terms of electrochemical performance and industrial viability.

🧪 Stabilizing a Metastable Structure

The breakthrough stems from the stabilization of a previously unreported metastable phase of sodium hydridoborate. This structure exhibits an ionic conductivity one order of magnitude higher than existing sodium conductors, and up to four orders of magnitude higher than its precursor. Such conductivity is crucial for enabling efficient ion transport in solid-state batteries, especially under challenging temperature conditions.

The researchers used a well-established materials science technique: heating the metastable form of sodium hydridoborate to induce crystallization, then rapidly cooling it to “freeze” the crystal structure. While this method is familiar in other fields, its application to solid electrolytes is unprecedented — and offers an accessible path toward scaling the technology for industrial use.

⚡ Thick Cathodes for Higher Energy Density

Unlike many sodium battery designs that rely on thin cathodes (limiting practical energy density), this study combined the stabilized sodium hydridoborate with an O3-type cathode coated in a chloride-based solid electrolyte. This enabled the creation of thick, high-areal-loading cathodes, reducing the proportion of inactive materials while maximizing energy capacity.

As first author Sam Oh of the A*STAR Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (Singapore) explains: “The thicker the cathode is, the theoretical energy density of the battery improves. This is a significant step toward making sodium batteries competitive with lithium.”

🌍 Why Sodium Matters

The importance of this research goes beyond the lab. Lithium shortages and environmental concerns over mining threaten the scalability of today’s energy storage solutions. Sodium, by contrast, is widely available in seawater and the Earth’s crust, making it a sustainable and scalable option for powering the world’s growing clean energy infrastructure.

As Professor Meng emphasizes: “It’s not a matter of sodium versus lithium. We need both. This new research gets us closer to that ultimate goal while advancing basic science along the way.”

🚀 Toward Commercialization

Because the stabilization technique is already established, industry adoption could be accelerated. Manufacturers would not need to completely overhaul existing processes, increasing the likelihood of sodium solid-state batteries making their way into electric vehicles, grid storage, and consumer electronics.

While challenges remain, this achievement demonstrates that sodium batteries can perform under real-world conditions — from standard room temperatures to freezing subzero climates — making them a promising alternative to lithium-ion systems.

🔗 Learn More

Read the original article on Tech Xplore:
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-09-sodium-based-battery-room-subzero.html

Journal Reference:
Jin An Sam Oh et al., Metastable sodium closo-hydridoborates for all-solid-state batteries with thick cathodes, Joule (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.joule.2025.102130

This article was prepared with the assistance of AI technologies.

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#sodiumbatteries #solidstatebatteries #energyinnovation #renewableenergy #energystorage #electrochemistry #materialsinnovation #quantumservernetworks #pwmat #subzeroperformance #cleanenergy #batterytechnology

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