Our country has achieved a major breakthrough in sodium-ion batteries.

The Hu Yongsheng team from the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, published a major breakthrough in Nature Energy: the team successfully developed a polymerizable non-flammable electrolyte with self-protective functionality (PNE). For the first time in the world, they achieved a complete interruption of thermal runaway in an ampere-hour-class sodium-ion battery. The team broke the traditional belief that “flame-retardant electrolytes equal safety,” moving beyond a single line of defense to build an intelligent safety protection system with a three-in-one design: thermal stability—interface stability—physical isolation. When the battery temperature abnormally rises to above 150°C, the PNE automatically changes from a liquid into a solidified, dense barrier—like building an “intelligent firewall” inside the battery—completely cutting off the propagation path of thermal runaway. Notably, this breakthrough did not sacrifice the battery’s high performance. The battery features excellent wide-temperature performance (-40°C to 60°C) and high-voltage stability (>4.3V), and all materials are mature industrialized products, giving it strong advantages for commercialization. This achievement is reshaping people’s understanding of battery safety and lays a solid foundation for the commercial deployment of sodium-ion batteries in areas such as electric vehicles, heavy-duty trucks, and large-scale energy storage. (Science and Technology Daily)