Weiyang Li
Dartmouth College
The extreme environments of many NASA planetary missions are far more demanding than those on Earth or in near-Earth applications. A typical case is the extreme cold environments on most of the outer planets, which poses a huge kinetic challenge to the electrochemical reactions at such low temperatures, making it rather difficult for the batteries to deliver the stored energy. The proposed research aims to develop groundbreaking high-energy and low-cost semi-solid sodium primary and rechargeable batteries that will operate at extreme cold temperatures (below -40 degrees Celsius) and exhibit high specific energy, excellent rate capability, and many-year lifetimes. These batteries will employ liquid with low freezing point or gas as cathode materials, which can tackle and alleviate the problem of slow kinetics in conventional solid-state cathodes when working at ultra-low temperatures. Such batteries will serve as affordable and sustainable power sources to meet broad NASA planetary science mission requirements for a variety of destinations.