Our country has made a major breakthrough in sodium-ion batteries, completely preventing thermal runaway.

April 6, the Hu Yongsheng team at the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, published a major breakthrough in 《Nature Energy》: the team successfully developed a polymerizable non-flammable electrolyte (PNE) with a self-protecting function, achieving the world’s first complete prevention of thermal runaway in ampere-hour–class sodium-ion batteries.

The team broke the traditional belief that “flame-retardant electrolytes equal safety,” moved beyond a single line of defense, and built a three-in-one intelligent safety protection system of “thermal stability–interface stability–physical isolation.” When the battery temperature rises abnormally to above 150°C, the PNE automatically solidifies from liquid into a dense barrier, like erecting an “intelligent firewall” inside the battery and completely cutting off the propagation pathway of thermal runaway.

It is worth noting that this breakthrough did not compromise the battery’s high-performance characteristics. The battery combines excellent wide-temperature performance (-40℃ to 60℃) and high-voltage stability (>4.3V), and its materials are all mature industrialized products, offering strong competitive advantages for industrialization.

This achievement has updated people’s understanding of battery safety. In the future, it will be applied to ampere-hour–class sodium-ion battery products of Zhongke Haineng Technology Co., Ltd., laying a solid foundation for the commercialization and deployment of sodium-ion batteries in areas such as electric vehicles, heavy-duty trucks, and large-scale energy storage.

(Image provided by the Hu Yongsheng team)

(Source: Science and Technology Daily)