As an auditor of battery manufacturers around the world, University of Maryland mechanical engineer Michael Pecht frequently finds himself touring spotless production floors. They’re akin to “the cleanest hospital that you could imagine–it’s semiconductor-type cleanliness,” he says. But he’s also seen the opposite, and plenty of it. Pecht estimates he’s audited dozens of battery factories where he found employees watering plants next to a production line or smoking cigarettes where...

When Microsoft researchers in 2023 identified a new kind of material that could dramatically reduce the amount of lithium needed in rechargeable batteries, it felt like combing through a haystack in record time. That’s because their discovery began as 32 million possibilities and, with the help of artificial intelligence, produced a promising candidate within 80 hours. Now researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory plan to synthesize and test the novel material, NaxLi3−xYCl6, i...