Liquid Metal Electrodes for Energy Storage Batteries

The increasing demands for integration of renewable energy into the grid and urgently needed devices for peak shaving and power rating of the grid both call for low-cost and large-scale energy storage technologies. The use of secondary batteries is considered one of the most effective approaches to solving the intermittency of renewables and smoothing the power fluctuations of the grid. In these batteries, the states of the electrode highly affect the performance and manufacturing process of the battery, and therefore leverage the price of the battery. A battery with liquid metal electrodes is easy to scale up and has a low cost and long cycle life. In this progress report, the state-of-the-art overview of liquid metal electrodes (LMEs) in batteries is reviewed, including the LMEs in liquid metal batteries (LMBs) and the liquid sodium electrode in sodium-sulfur (Na-S) and ZEBRA (Na-NiCl2) batteries. Besides the LMEs, the development of electrolytes for LMEs and the challenge of using LMEs in the batteries, and the future prospects of using LMEs are also discussed.