The irony of eco-friendly electric vehicles is the mountainous load of electronic waste they produce. So far, most targeted efforts to recycle EV batteries have been expensive and chemically toxic—and they haven’t stuck . That could change soon, however, thanks to a promising breakthrough from MIT.

In a Nature Chemistry paper published August 28, researchers describe a new type of self-assembling material that easily dissolves in organic solvents. It works reasonably well as the electrolyte in a solid-state battery cell—the design major EV producers are racing to implement . Notably, the process doesn’t require the harsh chemical and thermal conditions that make EV battery recycling so difficult, offering promising opportunities for recycling the batteries at scale, the research

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