Our country has achieved a major breakthrough in sodium-ion batteries.

People’s Finance and News, April 6—According to the Science and Technology Daily, on April 6, a team led by Hu Yongsheng at the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, published major results in Nature Energy: the team successfully developed a polymerizable nonflammable electrolyte (PNE) with a self-protection function. For the first time worldwide, it achieved a complete shutdown of thermal runaway in ampere-hour–class sodium-ion batteries. The team broke the traditional view that “flame-retardant electrolytes equal safety,” moved beyond a single line of defense, and built a three-in-one intelligent safety protection system integrating thermal stability, interfacial stability, and physical isolation. When the battery temperature rises abnormally to above 150°C, the PNE automatically transforms from a liquid into a solidified, dense barrier—like building an “intelligent firewall” inside the battery—completely cutting off the transmission path of thermal runaway. Notably, this breakthrough did not come at the expense of the battery’s high performance. The battery combines excellent wide-temperature performance (-40°C to 60°C) with high-voltage stability (>4.3V), and all materials are mature industrialized products, giving it strong advantages for industrialization and commercialization. This achievement updates people’s understanding of battery safety and lays a solid foundation for the commercial deployment of sodium-ion batteries in fields such as electric vehicles, heavy-duty trucks, and large-scale energy storage.