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In an effort to develop battery options safer than lithium, American and Korean scientists are utilizing mammal bones for the next generation of batteries.
In a research study published Tuesday in Applied Physics Reviews, a sodium battery that mimics mammal bones in their spongy interior and tough exterior was able to maintain 91% of its capacity for over 10,000 charge cycles, Inverse reported.
"We believe that nature provides a very promising solution to resolve technical problems," said Ho Seok Park, one of the study authors, in a news release. "Accordingly, we tried to find the ideal architecture that can resolve these kinetic and stability limitations."
Although they are popular in America and around the world, lithium batteries have explosive downsides. In recent years, mining lithium has also become less sustainable and more environmentally damaging.
Sodium is a viable option for batteries as salt is abundant and less damaging than lithium. Despite the growing interest, however, the scientists said sodium battery designs remain risky due to their cathodes being unstable under high-voltages.
The researchers emphasize that this is a proof-of-concept design. A large-scale study must be conducted for the bone-batteries, such as testing them at higher temperatures.
The researchers are from the University of Texas at Austin, Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York and Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, Korea.