The development of improved rechargeable batteries represents a major technological challenge for this new century, as batteries constitute the limiting components in the shift from petrol (gasoline) powered to electric vehicles, while also enabling the use of more renewable energy on the grid. To minimize the ecological implications associated with their wider use, we must integrate sustainability of battery materials into our research endeavours, choosing chemistries that have a minimum footprint in nature and that are more readily recycled or integrated into a full circular economy. Sustainability and cost concerns require that we greatly increase the battery lifetime and consider second lives for batteries. As part of this, we must monitor the state of health of batteries continuously during operation to minimize their degradation. It is thus important to push the frontiers of operando techniques to monitor increasingly complex processes. In this Review, we will describe key advances in both more sustainable chemistries and operando techniques, along with some of the remaining challenges and possible solutions, as we personally perceive them.

改进型可充电电池的发展对于新世纪来说是一个重大的技术挑战，因为电池构成了从汽油（汽油）向电动汽车转变的限制因素，同时还使电网能够使用更多的可再生能源。为了最大程度地减少与广泛使用相关的生态影响，我们必须将电池材料的可持续性纳入我们的研究工作，选择自然界足迹最小，更易于回收或整合到完整循环经济中的化学物质。可持续性和成本问题要求我们大大延长电池寿命，并考虑电池的第二寿命。在此过程中，我们必须在运行过程中连续监控电池的健康状况，以最大程度地减少其退化。操作技术来监视日益复杂的过程。在本综述中，我们将描述更可持续的化学和操作技术方面的关键进展，以及我们个人认为的一些尚存的挑战和可能的解决方案。