Our smart phones last one day. Electric cars have a range up to 300 miles and take hours to recharge. LiON batteries are built to last 500 charge cycles before they are bricked. These batteries can overheat and explode or catch fire. To top it off, they aren’t cheap. Are today’s LiON batteries awesome? Not so much.
There are many candidates vying to dethrone long-time champ LiON.
Who will emerge victorious?
When will that transition take place?
How long with the transition last?
When are we going to see a 10X or better battery technology?
Sadly, these answers will go wanting for years.
Battery technology has proven to be devilishly hard, with many dead-ends for seemingly promising projects.
History of the LiON battery
The idea for using lithium for batteries was proposed by Exxon researcher M Stanley Wittingham in the 70’s. It took close to 20 years before a commercial LiON battery was introduced in 1991 by Sony and Asahi Kasei.
Why did it take so long?
There were various lithium batteries that were tested but discountinued due to issues including cost, difficulty in the manufacturing process, and especially volatity and safety issues.
After the 90’s commercial release, there have been subsequent optimization processes to enhance performance and particle density. By 2011, LiON accounted for 66% of all portable, rechargeable battery sales in Japan.
What battery did LiON displace?
Nickel-cadmium (NiCD). When was NiCD invented? 1899. According to Wikipedia, NiCD’s market share dropped by 80% in the 90’s as LiON and Nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) gained popularity.
The switch from NiCD was due to the lower cost, the lack of memory effect, higher energy density, and lower self-discharge rate of LiON and low self-discharge (LSD) NiMH batteries.
Although LiON and NiMH are better than the NiCD batteries, the battery life gained has only modestly improved over this 100 year-old technology. We are still in search of the 10x better battery, though no imminent candidates have emerged.
Making the world a better battery
The winner of the LiON replacement should have the following characteristics.
- High energy density,
- Fast recharging time,
- Long life (recharge maximums),
- Low self-discharge rate,
- High discharge rates (i.e. power),
- Raw material availability,
- Stability,
- Ease of manufacturing, and
- Low toxicity.
Of the dozens of battery projects, here are a couple of the more interesting ones.
- Nano ‘yolk’ batteries being developed by MIT. This battery technology has the potential to increase recharge speeds (6 minutes to recharge), battery life (3x), and lifetime recharges. The researchers claim the materials are inexpensive and the manufacturing process can be made efficiently and scalable. They also claim the battery is nearly ready for commercialization.
- Ryen dual carbon batteries being developed by Power Japan Plus. Power Japan Plus claims the dual carbon batteries are environmentally friendly, charge faster than LiON, last up to 3,000 charge cycles, and are safer than LiON technology. Although Power Japan Plus was schedule to bring the Ryen batteries to market by now, I was unable to find any reviews or reference to production uses of the battery.
LiON rules for now
MIT’s nano ‘yolk’ battery research still uses LiON technology. The major enhancements in performance are achieved by replacing the graphite anode with an aluminum anode with a titanium oxide shell.
Although it would be nice if our batteries used environmentally-friendly, low-cost, and non-volatile materials, performance is the more pressing concern. The nano ‘yolk’ battery might extend the reign of LiON as the go-to battery for some time.
Will Moore’s Law ever apply?
Is there not a computer simulation model to analyze the chemical reactions of elements to test the viability of various combinations for battery use? It seems that such a tool could greatly compress the time to R&D new battery technologies. Computer-generated tests and models can also improve the time required to analyze energy density, volatility, recharge time, and expected lifetime charge cycles of new battery technology. Perhaps these tools already exist. If they are not yet available, these tools could provide the necessary boost to accelerate the historically snail’s pace of innovation of this ever important power technology.
