Lithium-ion batteries could get a significant boost in energy density from disordered rock salt (DRX), a versatile battery material that can be made with almost any transition metal instead of nickel and cobalt.
Formed last fall, the DRX Consortium – which includes a team of approximately 50 scientists from Berkeley Lab, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the University of California at Santa Barbara – was awarded $20 million from the Vehicle Technologies Office in DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
“DRX offers more sustainable, more abundant, and cheaper mineral sources for battery cathodes,” Ceder said. “The lithium-ion battery is a really good energy storage technology, but to stay relevant, it will need to grow toward higher production of multiple terawatt hours per year. Without DRX, lithium-ion batteries would require enormous amounts of nickel and cobalt if we stay with current technologies.
“DRX could be the go-to material for battery cathodes,” added Chen. “We already have the advantage of cost and resources. Now all we have to do is improve performance.”DRX is still a very young technology – Ceder and his team developed DRX just less than 10 years ago, in 2014, as a response to a rapidly growing lithium-ion battery industry. New battery technologies typically take 20 to 30 years to mature. But DRX is on an unusually fast track toward commercialization.
Ceder and Chen demonstrated DRX’s potential during a four-year program called the “Deep Dive,” which was also funded by the DOE Vehicle Technologies Office. That program ended in 2022, and the consortium formed soon after with the goal of demonstrating commercial-ready DRX cathodes in less than 5 years., including battery electric, plug-in hybrid electric, or fuel cell electric vehicles. In California, all new cars must be zero-emission vehicles beginning in 2035.
To achieve this ambitious goal, Ceder and Chen formed the DRX Consortium, enlisting top battery scientists from across the country and national lab system to help.
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