our weekly newsletter<\/a> for exclusive and original coverage from ITV News. Direct to your inbox every Friday morning. <\/p>\nHowever, the team said advanced computer modelling and laboratory experiments have shown that oxygen plays a much more active role in the charging and discharging process.<\/p>\n
They said the findings could lead to the development of batteries for electronics and vehicles that charge faster, last longer, and are safer to use.<\/p>\n
Dr Hrishit Banerjee, a theoretical physicist at Dundee\u2019s faculty of science, engineering and business, said: \u201cGlobal populations have become increasingly reliant on renewable energy technologies and advanced energy storage systems from everything from the mobile phones in our pockets to the cars we drive.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has made understanding the technology underpinning electronic processes inside battery materials increasingly important.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis research is crucial and gives us a new understanding of how batteries function at a fundamental level.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr Hrishit Bannerjee said the research shines light on how batteries work “at a fundamental level” Credit: University of Dundee\/PA<\/p>\n
The study compared two of the main lithium-ion battery cathodes used today \u2013 phosphates and layered oxides.<\/p>\n
Together these forms of batteries are used for a host of applications, including electric vehicles and portable electronics such as mobile phones and laptops.<\/p>\n
The study found that while phosphates showed little oxygen participation, the layered oxides showed \u201csignificant\u201d electron extraction from oxygen.<\/p>\n
Dr Banerjee said: \u201cBy improving our knowledge of what is occurring at a tiny, atomic level within batteries, we can make big leaps in improving their performance in the real world.<\/p>\n
\u201cCurrent technologies are limited by the understanding of the underlying physics of how and why batteries fail over time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis general framework will help design batteries with much longer lifetimes.\u201d<\/p>\n
The full findings have been published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. <\/p>\n
Want a quick and expert briefing on the biggest news stories? Listen to our latest podcasts to find out What You Need To Know… <\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists have announced a breakthrough in our understanding of how batteries work, saying it could lead to \u201cbig…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-665516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-gb","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}