Transitioning to electrified transport requires improvements in sustainability, energy density, power density, lifetime, and approved the cost of lithium-ion batteries, with significant opportunities remaining in the development of next-generation cathodes. This presents a highly complex, multiparameter optimization challenge, where developments in cathode chemical design and discovery, theoretical and experimental understanding, structural and morphological control, synthetic approaches, and cost reduction strategies can deliver performance enhancements required in the near- and longer-term. This multifaceted challenge requires an interdisciplinary approach to solve, which has seen the establishment of numerous academic and industrial consortia around the world to focus on cathode development. One such example is the Next Generation Lithium-ion Cathode Materials project, FutureCat, established by the UK’s Faraday Institution for electrochemical energy storage research in 2019, aimed at developing our understanding of existing and newly discovered cathode chemistries. Here, we present our perspective on persistent fundamental challenges, including protective coatings and additives to extend lifetime and improve interfacial ion transport, the design of existing and the discovery of new cathode materials where cation and cation-plus-anion redox-activity can be exploited to increase energy density, the application of earth-abundant elements that could ultimately reduce costs, and the delivery of new electrode topologies resistant to fracture which can extend battery lifetime.

We report a detailed study of the transport properties of a $\beta -\mathrm{B}{\mathrm{i}}_4{\mathrm{I}}_4$ quasi-one-dimensional topological insulator. Electrical resistivity, thermoelectric power, thermal conductivity, and Hall coefficient measurements are consistent with the possible appearance of a charge-density-wave order at low temperatures. Both electrons and holes contribute to the conduction in $\beta -\mathrm{B}{\mathrm{i}}_4{\mathrm{I}}_4$ and the dominant type of charge carrier changes with temperature as a consequence of temperature-dependent carrier densities and mobilities. Measurements of resistivity and Seebeck coefficient under hydrostatic pressure up to 2 GPa show a shift of the charge-density-wave order to higher temperatures suggesting a strongly one-dimensional character at ambient pressure. Surprisingly, superconductivity is induced in $\beta -\mathrm{B}{\mathrm{i}}_4{\mathrm{I}}_4$ above 10 GPa with $T_c$ of 4.0 K which is slightly decreasing upon increasing the pressure up to 20 GPa. Chemical characterization of the pressure-treated samples shows amorphization of $\beta -\mathrm{B}{\mathrm{i}}_4{\mathrm{I}}_4$ under pressure and rules out decomposition into Bi and $\mathrm{Bi}{\mathrm{I}}_3$ at room-temperature conditions.

Anion polarisation in heterocationic Li ₂ FeSO stabilises polar anion coordination in opposition to the predictions from simple point-charge electrostatics. This behaviour gives local configurational under-constraint and causes long-range disorder.

New electrode architectures promise huge potential for improving batteries’ electrochemical properties, such as power density, energy density, and lifetime. In this work, the use of laser-induced forward transfer (LIFT) was employed and evaluated as a tool for the development of advanced electrode architectures. For this purpose, it was first confirmed that the printing process has no effect on the transferred battery material by comparing the electrochemical performance of the printed anodes with state-of-the-art coated ones. For this, polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) was used as a binder and n-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) as a solvent, which is reported to be printable. Subsequently, multilayer electrodes with flake-like and spherical graphite particles were printed to test if a combination of their electrochemical related properties can be realized with measured specific capacities ranging from 321 mAh$·$g⁻¹ to 351 mAh$·$g⁻¹. Further, a multilayer anode design with a silicon-rich intermediate layer was printed and electrochemically characterized. The initial specific capacity was found to be 745 mAh$·$g⁻¹. The presented results show that the LIFT technology offers the possibility to generate alternative electrode designs, promoting research in the optimization of 3D battery systems.

A new modification of Mn(OH)Cl was obtained under high‐pressure/high‐temperature conditions in a Walker‐type multianvil device. The pale pink, hygroscopic compound crystallizes in the orthorhombic space groupPnma(no. 62) witha= 602.90(4),b= 350.98(2),c= 1077.69(7) pm, andV= 228 × 10⁶pm³. The layered centrosymmetric structure consists of edge‐sharing Mn(OH)₃Cl₃octahedra arranged in sheets parallel to the (001) plane. The comparatively long H···Cl distance of 275 pm suggests only weak hydrogen bonds between neighboring layers. Spin‐polarized scalar‐relativistic DFT+Ucalculations predict a non‐conducting magnetically ordered ground state with a band gap of at least 3.2 eV and an effective magnetic moment of 4.65 µ_B/f. u. The experimentally determined magnetic response of Mn(OH)Cl is paramagnetic in the range of 10–300 K. The estimated moment of 5.6 µ_B/f. u. indicates the high‐spind⁵configuration of manganese(II). We find hints for a long‐range magnetic ordering below 10 K.