Battery week 2026: The EV cathode race & battery-recycling | The chemical breakdown podcast

Marianna Kneppers· Host0:00

[gentle music] A race between competing battery cathode materials is heating up, the winner of which will shape the future of electric vehicles. But which will come out on top? And researchers have created a photocatalyst capable of turning plastic waste into hydrogen and value-added chemicals. We explore what this could mean for building a truly circular economy. I'm Marianna Kneppers, Chemistry World's science media producer, and this is The Chemical Breakdown. This week's episode is all about batteries as we celebrate Chemistry World's Battery Week. It's a week packed with webinars and online content exploring the latest in battery science. You can take part and sign up for the webinars by visiting chemistryworld.com/collections and clicking on the Energy Storage and Battery section. Now let's take a look at this week's news from the Chemistry World website. [gentle music] New research shows that millimolar concentrations of water absorbed from the air were enough to tip the thermodynamic balance between two polymorphs of a supramolecular monolayer. The work is a reminder that trace impurities can have outsize effects and shows how solvent handling can create reproducibility issues. A bacterium ribosome has been engineered that uses one less amino acid than the canonical 20 used in every