Could sodium replace lithium as the dominant ingredient in batteries?

By Syed Abdul Ahad, Research Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Chemistry, University of Limerick

The world we live in today runs on batteries. But the lithium ion batteries that dominate the market are expensive and environmentally demanding to extract. The raw materials for lithium ion batteries are scarce and concentrated in a few geographical regions. This places continued pressure on supply chains.

Sodium-ion batteries are a promising alternative because they use abundant materials. But sodium has shortcomings that have blocked it from being used as a replacement for lithium.

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