According to the team, the battery – based on manganese dioxide (MnO2) – offers a high cycle life and high areal capacity. The latter factor is said to be critical when packing a lot of battery electrodes together into a case. In the past, the team said, researchers have achieved either high cycle life or high areal capacity, but never both together.
Their development has been enabled by intercalating copper into bismuth-modified δ-MnO2, or birnessite. Discovered by Ford in the 1980s, birnessite has not been previously used at high areal capacity, something overcome by a CUNY team led by Professor Sanjoy Banerjee (pictured).
The team also included principal inventor Gautam Yadav, Joshua Gallaway, Damon Turney, Michael Nyce, Jinchao Huang and Xia Wei.