The increasing amounts of end-of-life lithium-ion batteries (EOL LIBs) require novel and safe solutions allowing for the minimisation of the health and environmental hazards. Arguably, the best approach to the problem of EOL LIBs is recycling and recovery of the metals contained within the cells. This allows the diversion of the EOL battery cells from the environment but also the recovery of precious metals that can be reused in the manufacturing of new products, allowing to reduce the requirements of virgin materials from the mining industry. The most significant hindrance to the recycling process of EOL LIBs is their unstable chemical nature and significant safety hazards related to opening the air-tight casings. To minimise these issues, the end-of-life cells must be stabilised in one of the few available ways. This review aims at a comprehensive presentation of the studied chemical methods of EOL LIB cells discharge and stabilisation. The advantages and disadvantages of the method and its variations are discussed based on the literature published to date. The literature review found that a significant number of authors make use of chemical stabilisation techniques without proper comprehension of the associated risks. Many authors focus solely on the cheapest and fastest way to stop a cell from producing an electrical charge without extra thought given to the downstream recycling processes of safety hazards related to the proposed stabilisation method. Only a few studies highlighted the risks and problems associated with chemical stabilisation techniques.

The bonding across the lattice and ordered structures endow crystals with unique symmetry and determine their macroscopic properties. Crystals with unique properties such as low-dimensional materials, metal-organic frameworks, and defected crystals, in particular, exhibit different structures from bulk crystals and possess exotic physical properties, making them intriguing subjects for investigation. To accurately predict the physical and chemical properties of crystals, it is crucial to consider long-range orders. While GNN excels at capturing the local environment of atoms in crystals, they often face challenges in effectively capturing longer-ranged interactions due to their limited depth. In this paper, we propose CrysToGraph ( Crystals with Transformers on Graph), a novel and robust transformer-based geometric graph network designed for unconventional crystalline systems, and UnconvBench, a comprehensive benchmark to evaluate models’ predictive performance on multiple categories of crystal materials. CrysToGraph effectively captures short-range interactions with transformer-based graph convolution blocks as well as long-range interactions with graph-wise transformer blocks. CrysToGraph proofs its effectiveness in modelling all types of crystal materials in multiple tasks, and moreover, it outperforms most existing methods, achieving new state-of-the-art results on two benchmarks. This work enhances the development of novel crystal materials in various fields, including the anodes, cathodes, and solid-state electrolytes.

The article discusses the main advancements and discoveries regarding the application of graphene (Gr) and graphene quantum dots (GQDs) in batteries and supercapacitors, highlighting how these materials have revolutionized the field of energy storage. The main findings of the work include the confirmation that graphene and GQDs significantly improve the efficiency, storage capacity, and stability of energy devices. The study found that GQDs and supercapacitors made of graphene can achieve amazing capacitances, like 566 F/g, and keep up to 95% of their capacity after 2,000 charge and discharge cycles. In lithium-ion batteries, the incorporation of these nanomaterials has resulted in capacities of up to 2,882 mAh/g, demonstrating a substantial improvement in energy density and battery lifespan. The study also identified the most effective synthesis methods, such as chemical oxidation and hydrothermal processes, and optimized them to produce high-quality graphene and GQDs, thereby directly impacting the devices’ performance. The study also revealed that the integration of graphene and GQDs is driving the exponential growth of the supercapacitor and battery market, projected to reach values of up to 12.37 billion dollars and 500.5 billion dollars, respectively, by 2032. The article concludes that these materials play a fundamental role in the evolution of energy storage technologies, with the potential to shape the future of energy sustainability and technological innovation.

High energy density Ni-rich layered oxide cathodes LiNi0.83Co0.12Mn0.05-xAlxO2 (x=0, 0.025, 0.05; NMC, NMCA, and NCA, respectively) are fabricated in two different microstructural forms: (i) nanoparticles (NP) and (ii) nanofibers (NF), to evaluate the morphology and compositional effect on the electrochemical properties using same precursors, with the latter fabricated by electrospinning process. Although all the cathodes exhibit a similar crystal structure as confirmed by X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy, contrasting difference is observed in their electrochemical properties. XRD and XPS analyses indicate a higher amount of cationic disorder for the NP cathodes compared to their NF counterparts. Nanofibrous Ni-rich layered oxide cathodes exhibit higher discharge capacities at all C-rates in comparison to NP cathodes. When cycled at 1C-rate for 100 cycles, capacity retention of 81% is observed for NCA-NF, which is superior to all cathodes. Voltage decay as a function of the charge-discharge cycle is found to be low (0.2 mV/cycle) for nanofibrous cathodes compared to 1.5 mV/cycle for NP cathodes. The good rate capability and cyclic stability of nanofibrous Ni-rich layered oxide cathodes are attributed to a shorter pathway of Li+ diffusion and a large proportion of the active surface area.

Once batteries reach their end-of-life (EoL), they are expected to be collected, dismantled, and shredded into black mass (BM) which includes wealth amounts of critical metals. BM can be regarded as a kind of urban mines, where recyclers extract critical metals and reintroduce them into new battery manufacturing. Focusing on the BM, this article discussed the necessity of BM recovery and current recycling situations. Although the benefits of recycling are commonly agreed upon, there remain still many challenges and issues to overcome. The BM market is still in its infancy, relevant regulatory frameworks need to be updated with the widespread use and advancement of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). Current BM-producing and processing technologies still have room for large improvements in terms of economic feasibility and sustainability that in the end requires efforts from both researchers and industrial stakeholders with growing interests and patient engagements.

The aqueous metal-H2O2 batteries have been paying rapidly increasing attention due to their large theoretical energy densities, high power density, and multiple applications (air, land, and sea), especially in low-content oxygen or nonoxygen conditions in which metal-air cells are out of work. However, the requirements of metal-H2O2 batteries are different due to the order of metal activities (Mg>Al>Zn) as well as metal-air cells. Aqueous metal-H2O2 batteries mainly include Al-H2O2, Mg-H2O2, and Zn-H2O2 batteries with respective scientific problems, including battery structures, single/dual-electrolyte systems, electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction/evolution reactions and H2O2 reduction/production/decomposition, and the designability of anode to inhibit self-corrosion. In this review, we summarized battery architectures, possible mechanisms, and recent progress in metal-H2O2 batteries including Al-H2O2, Mg-H2O2, and Zn-H2O2 batteries. Several perspectives are also provided for these research fields, which may be focused on in the future.

Bi2O3 (BT) is considered a fascinating anode material for asymmetric supercapacitors (ASCs) due to its high theoretical capacity, but the low conductivity limits further applications. With this in mind, cerium-doped Bi2O3 (Ce−BT) nanoflower spheres were synthesized by a facile and rapid microwave-assisted solvothermal method for ASCs anode materials. It is found that the morphology of BT could be controlled by Ce doping from stacked nanosheets to well-dispersed nanoflowers spheres and producing abundant amorphous regions, thus expediting the ion transport rate. Consequently, When the added Bi to Ce molar ratio is 40:1 (Ce-BT-40), it exhibited a specific capacitance of 721 F g−1 at 0.5 A g−1. Additionally, when fabricating ASCs with as-prepared Ce−BT−40 and CeNiCo-LDH, an energy density of 59.1 Wh kg−1 is provided at a power density of 652 W kg−1. This work not only reveals the mechanism of the effect of Ce doping on the electrochemical properties of BTs but also proposes a rapid synthesis method of Ce−BTs by microwave-assisted solvent method, which provides new insights for building advanced ASCs with high energy density and low cost.