How to circumvent the size limitation of liquid metal batteries due to the Tayler instability

TL;DR

This paper investigates the Tayler instability in large-scale liquid metal batteries and explores methods to prevent it, aiming to enable scalable liquid metal battery designs for practical energy storage.

Contribution

It provides a detailed characterization of the Tayler instability in self-assembled liquid metal batteries and discusses technical strategies to circumvent size limitations.

Findings

Characterized the Tayler instability in large-scale liquid metal batteries.

Identified potential methods to avoid the instability.

Discussed implications for scaling up liquid metal battery technology.

Abstract

Recently, a new type of battery has been proposed that relies on the principle of self-assembling of a liquid metalloid positive electrode, a liquid electrolyte, and a liquid metal negative electrode. While this configuration has been claimed to allow arbitrary up-scaling, there is a size limitation of such a system due to a current-driven kink-type instability that is known as the Tayler instability. We characterize this instability in large-scale self-assembled liquid metal batteries and discuss various technical means how it can be avoided.