To power a car so it can travel hundreds of miles at a time, lithium-ion batteries of the future are going to have to hold more energy without growing too big in size.
Boston College chemist Dunwei Wang
That's one of the dilemmas confronting efforts to power cars through re-chargeable battery technologies. In order to hold enough energy to enable a car trip of 300-500 miles before re-charging, current lithium-ion batteries become too big or too expensive.
In the search for the "post-lithium-ion" battery, Associate Professor of Chemistry Dunwei Wang has been developing materials that might one day enable the manufacture of new batteries capable of meeting power demands within the size and cost constraints of car makers and other industries.