Scientists in the US have developed an anode from mushrooms, which they claim will boost lithium-ion battery performance.
Researchers at Purdue University in West Lafayette used carbon fibres derived from a type of wild mushroom and modified with nanoparticles to create a hybrid anode with a stable capacity of 530 milliamp hours per gram.
The anode, made from wild fungus called Tyromyces fissilis, has been shown to outperform conventional graphite electrodes for lithium-ion batteries, claim the scientists.
Vilas Pol an associate professor in the School of Chemical Engineering and the School of Materials Engineering, said: “Current state-of-the-art lithium-ion batteries must be improved in both energy density and power output in order to meet the future energy storage demand in electric vehicles and grid energy-storage technologies.
“So there is a dire need to develop new anode materials with superior performance.”
Pol and doctoral student Jialiang Tang found carbon fibres derived from Tyromyces fissilis and modified by attaching cobalt oxide nanoparticles outperformed conventional graphite in the anodes.
The hybrid design has a synergistic result, Pol said. “Both the carbon fibers and cobalt oxide particles are electrochemically active, so your capacity number goes higher because they both participate.”
Comparisons with other fungi showed the Tyromyces fissilis was especially abundant in fibres. The fibres are burned under high temperatures in a chamber containing argon gas, yielding pure carbon in the original shape of the fungus fibres.
The interconnected network brings faster electron transport, which could result in faster battery charging, claim the researchers.
The findings were published in the American Chemical Society’s Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering journal.
