New research published in Nature Communications reveals that manganese has a novel chemical state. According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, this new state enables a high-performance, low-cost sodium-ion battery that could quickly and efficiently store and distribute energy produced by solar panels and wind turbines across the electrical grid. The idea of the existence of this state was first proposed almost a century ago, but it was only in 2018 when scientists were able to prove it. They used a specially-designed battery to test their hypothesis. “The battery that Natron Energy supplied for the study features an unconventional design for an anode, which is one of its two electrodes,” the researchers explained in a press release . Different from what it’s seen in lithium-ion and sodium-ion batteries, where the anode is often carbon-based, the anode in this experiment is made up of a blend […]