As the sales of electric vehicles skyrocketed in 2021, lithium, nickel, manganese and cobalt prices rose and we learned of the human and environmental costs of mining them. Now, a serendipitous discovery by scientists in Drexel’s College of Engineering promises to make sulfur batteries commercially viable and much longer lasting than lithium ion batteries.

These batteries would last more than 4,000 recharges – the equivalent of 10 years of use – and “improve the performance of batteries in electric vehicles and mobile devices in a commercially viable way,” said Vibha Kalra, PhD, of Drexel’s Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, who led the research.