Decades-Old Biology Technique Reveals Key to Prolonging Electric Aircraft Battery Life

A recent study has shown that a groundbreaking electrolyte solution, identified through a bioscience technique, has quadrupled the cycle life of batteries used in electric aircraft.
When it comes to figuring out why electric aircraft batteries lose power over time, one typically wouldn’t think to turn to a decades-old approach biologists use to study the structure and function of components in living organisms. However, it turns out that omics, a field that helped scientists unravel the secrets of the human genome, could also soon play a key role in making carbon-free air travel a reality.

In a new study in the journal Joule, a team of researchers led by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) used omics techniques to study the intricate interactions within the anode, cathode, and electrolyte of electric aircraft batteries. One of the most significant findings was the discovery that certain salts mixed into the battery electrolyte formed a protective coating on cathode particles, making them far more resistant to corrosion, thereby enhancing battery life.