📌 TOPINDIATOURS Update ai: New sodium-ion cathode resists air damage, keeps 80% ca

Researchers at Central South University have developed a sodium-ion battery cathode that resists air damage, tackling a key flaw that has long limited the technology’s real-world use.

Sodium-ion batteries are considered a low-cost alternative for large-scale energy storage, but their sensitivity to air has been a persistent problem.

Exposure to moisture and carbon dioxide can trigger side reactions that degrade the cathode, blocking ion movement and reducing performance.

This instability has made it difficult to handle, store, and deploy sodium-ion batteries outside controlled environments. As a result, despite their cost advantages, they have struggled to compete with more established battery technologies.

The new study addresses this issue by redesigning the cathode at a structural level. Instead of using a uniform material, the team introduced a radial gradient that changes composition and properties from the surface to the core.

Built to resist air

To create this structure, the researchers first synthesized a core-shell precursor with different chemical compositions in the inner and outer regions.

During high-temperature processing, these layers gradually merged, forming a continuous gradient rather than a sharp interface.

The final material features a mixed-phase outer layer and a more stable inner core. The outer region increases the oxidation state of transition metals, which helps suppress reactions with water and carbon dioxide. This acts as a protective barrier against environmental damage.

At the same time, the inner structure maintains strong sodium storage capacity, ensuring that performance is not sacrificed for stability. This dual-function design allows the cathode to operate efficiently while resisting degradation.

Electrochemical testing showed a significant improvement in durability. After 200 charge and discharge cycles, the modified cathode retained about 80 percent of its capacity. In contrast, a conventional version retained only around 21 percent under similar conditions.

Stability meets performance gains

The material also demonstrated strong resistance to real-world conditions. Even after 10 hours of exposure to humid air containing carbon dioxide, it maintained a first-cycle capacity of 103.8 mAh per gram.

Capacity loss under these conditions dropped sharply, from more than 50 percent in standard materials to just over 12 percent in the modified version. This marks a substantial improvement in environmental stability.

The gradient structure also improves how sodium ions move within the cathode. Faster ion transport reduces energy loss during operation, improving overall efficiency during charging and discharging.

According to the researchers, the strength of the design lies in integrating multiple stabilizing mechanisms into a single architecture.

By controlling composition, crystal structure, and electronic states across the material, the cathode remains stable during repeated cycling while resisting external degradation.

The approach could extend beyond sodium-ion batteries. Similar gradient-based designs may help improve durability in other energy storage systems where both cost and long-term stability are critical.

With sodium being abundant and inexpensive, such advances could accelerate the deployment of sodium-ion batteries in grid storage, renewable energy integration, and backup power applications.

Overcoming air instability removes a key barrier to scaling the technology for real-world use.

The study was published in the journal Carbon Energy.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com

📌 TOPINDIATOURS Breaking ai: Sam Altman Confronted At Oscars Party Over Pentagon D

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman became a guest of dishonor at an after-Oscars bash last Sunday, after being viciously confronted about his company’s deal with the so-called Department of War, Page Six reports.

The party, hosted by Vanity Fair, was attended by A-listers like Michael B. Jordan, Timothée Chalamet, and other celebrities including Kylie Jenner, Teyana Taylor, and Zoe Saldaña. 

Why Altman, a tech guy, was invited in the first place is an open question, though we’d wager it has something to do with how he’s openly been trying to court Hollywood executives for years now, even angling to break into the motion picture industry himself by backing an AI-animated feature film.

At least one famous attendee wasn’t happy to see Altman showing his face: the lauded playwright and screenwriter Jeremy O. Harris. Harris, who won a Tony Award for “Slave Play” and co-wrote the indie film “Zola,” reportedly made a bee-line for Altman and accused him of being the “[Joseph] Goebbels of the Trump administration” for his deal with the Pentagon.

Altman responded calmly, sources told Page Six..

Goebbels, as you may well know, was the Nazi’s regime’s minister of propaganda under Adolf Hitler. What does that have to do with Altman? In an email to Page Six, Harris apologized — for comparing Altman to the wrong Nazi collaborator.

“It was late and I had a few too many martinis so I misspoke when I said Goebbels… I should’ve said Friedrich Flick,” Harris stated.

Flick was an uber-rich German industrialist who became the Nazi regime’s biggest supplier with his business empire spanning iron, steel, coal, cars, chemicals, aircraft, and arms. At the Nuremberg Trials, he was found guilty of war crimes; his trial focused on his use of Russian slave labor at his businesses during the war.

In Harris’s view, Altman is similarly colluding with a war-mongering government. In late February, OpenAI sparked outrage after announcing a new deal with the Department of Defense to deploy its AI systems across the military. Hardly a day passed after Altman’s announcement when the Trump administration ordered a barrage of deadly airstrikes in Iran that killed its supreme leader Ali Khamenei — and, to date, upwards of 1,000 civilians. 

Making Altman look even worse was that OpenAI’s rival Anthropic had refused to cut a deal with the military to give it unrestricted access to its AI, despite weighty threats from the administration that included a government seizure of its tech. The backlash was so widespread that Anthropic’s Claude replaced OpenAI’s ChatGPT at the top of the app store, protests raged outside the former company’s headquarters, and hundreds of its employees signed an open letter demanding their employer refuse to the Pentagon’s demands for unfettered access to its AI systems.

In the week that followed, Altman went into full damage control mode; he publicly apologized for the Pentagon deal being “rushed,” and behind the scenes, he defended his decision on collaborating with the military at an all-hands meeting. He also updated the agreement to emphasize the redlines Anthropic had insisted on before negotiations fell through: a restriction against using AI in autonomous weaponry without humans in the loop and in the mass surveillance of US citizens.

The fallout of Altman’s military deal isn’t over yet, evidently. A top OpenAI executive, Caitlin Kalinowski, quit the company in protest of Altman’s rushed deal, which she criticized for not defining key guardrails around its AI tech.

More on OpenAI: Sam Altman Thanks Programmers for Their Effort, Says Their Time Is Over

The post Sam Altman Confronted At Oscars Party Over Pentagon Deal appeared first on Futurism.

🔗 Sumber: futurism.com