A surprising breakthrough could help sodium-ion batteries rival lithium—and even turn seawater into drinking water. Scientists discovered that keeping water inside a key battery material, instead of removing it as traditionally done, dramatically boosts performance. The “wet” version stores nearly twice as much charge, charges faster, and remains stable for hundreds of cycles, placing it among the top-performing sodium battery materials ever reported.
One in ten of chemistries in the lab work in real world conductions. One in ten of those are cheap enough to consider production. One in ten of those can scale up to mass manufacturing. Most research works like that. You have to keep going until you hit jackpot.