Background

The global market for lithium ion batteries has grown significantly in the past 10 years and is expected to continue to grow at a rate of up to 15% per year for at least the next seven years. The UK government pledge to phase out new petrol and diesel cars by 2030 will undoubtedly lead to higher production volumes of electric cars and therefore the battery technology with which to power them. However, the current batteries can only take a car about 400 km after a single charging, which is substantially less than the range of conventional cars. If a battery’s energy density could be doubled, the driving range would be doubled.

Research into replacing the traditionally used graphite