What happened
- A team from Fudan University in Shanghai, with the University of New South Wales, published online on 28 October 2026 in Science Advances a method to stabilise lithium-rich cathodes in solid-state batteries.
- The technique, which they call “coat, sinter and wash”, first applies an ammonium tungstate precursor to the cathode particles. On sintering, tungsten enters the crystal lattice and acts as a “chemical rivet” that makes oxygen chemistry more reversible.
- The final wash rebuilds the surface as a spinel layer that curbs oxygen release and material breakdown.
- The solid-state battery kept 80% of its capacity after 500 cycles at 0.5 C and 25 °C, and delivered a reversible capacity of 278.2 mAh per gram at 0.1 C and 40 °C.
Why it matters
- Lithium- and manganese-rich layered oxides store more energy than commercial cathodes, but they lose oxygen at high voltage and degrade at the interface with the solid electrolyte. Those two problems have held back their use.
- The method tackles both at once, inside the material and at its surface.
- A pouch cell with a silicon anode reached 543 Wh per kilogram, an energy density above that of the lithium-ion batteries in current electric cars.
- The cathode relies on manganese, a metal that is more abundant and cheaper than cobalt or nickel.
The number
543 Wh/kg. That is the energy density of the pouch cell with a silicon anode, with an areal capacity of 4.55 mAh per square centimetre.
Context
Solid-state batteries replace the flammable liquid electrolyte with a solid one. They promise more safety and more energy, but large-scale manufacturing is still expensive and high-energy materials degrade quickly.
Mamífero has followed this technology: Saft opened its first solid-state battery line for aviation in Bordeaux. In other chemistries, a recyclable sulfur flow battery kept 98.1% of its capacity. Fast charging is also advancing, as with Chery’s 1.44 MW charger. And the business does not always follow: Sonnen filed for insolvency in Germany.
What’s next
- The authors present the method as a scalable framework. It still has to be tested in larger cells and over more cycles than an electric car demands.
- The 500 cycles at 80% retention are a lab result. A vehicle needs several times that figure.
- For countries that produce lithium and manganese, cathodes that use more manganese and less cobalt open another demand route.
Bottom line
The work fixes, in a single process, two failures that held back lithium-rich cathodes. The 543 Wh/kg figure stands out, but it came from a laboratory cell. The next step is to show the material survives thousands of cycles outside it.
Sources
- Ying, J., Liu, G., Wang, B. et al., “A unified lattice–surface engineering strategy stabilizing oxygen redox in Li-rich cathodes for all-solid-state batteries”, Science Advances, published online 28 October 2026, DOI 10.1126/sciadv.aei9538. Date and abstract confirmed on Crossref.
- Cover image: Sevenethics, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Edited by Rodrigo Cornejo. How we select and verify: who writes these notes.
