South Korean Scientists Design Lighter, Longer-Range EV Battery
Researchers at KAIST in South Korea have used a chip-making technique to build anode-free lithium-metal batteries that store more energy in less space and weight, potentially allowing electric vehicles to travel farther on a single charge.
A team led by Professors Jinwoo Lee and Hee-Tae Jung at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), working with colleagues from Kyungpook National University and the National NanoFab Center, has announced a promising advance in electric-vehicle battery design. The innovation centres on an anode-free architecture: by eliminating the conventional graphite anode, the battery becomes lighter and more compact, freeing up space for higher energy density. The longstanding problem with anode-free designs is that lithium metal deposits unevenly during charging, forming destructive needle-like growths called dendrites that shorten battery life. The KAIST team tackled this by patterning the copper current-collector foil with microscopic tube structures — each roughly 300 nanometres across and 150 nanometres tall — using secondary sputtering lithography (SSL), a precision technique borrowed from semiconductor manufacturing. The patterned surface offers about four times the deposition area of a flat copper sheet, encouraging lithium to settle more evenly. The researchers also applied an ultrathin 10-nanometre MXene coating that acts as a primer, promoting the formation of a stable lithium-fluoride-rich protective layer during operation. Together, these features guide lithium to deposit uniformly and suppress dendrite growth, extending the battery's useful life without meaningfully increasing its size or weight. Co-first authors of the study are KAIST researchers Eunji Kim, Hyunju Jung, and Jinuk Kim. The findings were published online on September 1 in the international journal Advanced Functional Materials.
