Emerging Battery Technologies: The Main Aging Mechanisms and Challenges

New-generation batteries are attracting increasing interest in response to today’s energy storage challenges, as evidenced by the steady rise in scientific publications on the topic. However, their industrial deployment remains limited due to the complexity of aging mechanisms, which are still poorly understood and difficult to control. While several promising developments have emerged in laboratory settings, they remain too immature to be scaled up. These aging processes, which directly affect the performance, safety, and lifespan of battery systems, also determine their technical and economic viability. This review offers a comparative analysis of aging phenomena—both specific to individual technologies and common across systems—drawing on findings from accelerated testing, post-mortem analyses, and modeling. It highlights critical failures such as interface instability, loss of active material, and mechanical stress, while also identifying shared patterns and the unique features of each technology. By combining experimental data with theoretical approaches, the article proposes an integrated framework for understanding and prioritizing aging mechanisms by technology type. It underscores the limitations of current characterization techniques, the urgent need for harmonized testing protocols, and the importance of standardized data sharing. Finally, it outlines possible avenues for improving the understanding and mitigation of aging phenomena.