Nanostructured materials for batteries

Nanostructured metals can aid fast battery cycling by providing continuous paths for electron and ion transport. The novel fabrication method of liquid crystal templating has been used to make nanostructured platinum and tin as monolithic films containing hexagonal pore structures with controllable lattice parameters of about 5 nm. The pore structure leads to a surface area enhancement in platinum giving a double layer capacitance of 0.05 Fcm-2 and a series resistance of less than 0.005 Ωcm2 in a 3 micron film. A similar nanostructure in tin has been shown to withstand the expansion and contraction strains during lithium cycling