
Battery breakthrough: Double performance lithium battery that doesn’t catch fire - vezycash
https://news.umich.edu/battery-breakthrough-doubling-performance-with-lithium-metal-that-doesnt-catch-fire/
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ChuckMcM
Having read through a lot of battery breakthrough reports, I tend to zero in
on the 'hard bit' which in this particular case is here: _U-M researchers
solved this problem with chemical and mechanical treatments that provide a_
pristine _surface for lithium to plate evenly, effectively suppressing the
formation of dendrites or filaments._

My reading of that was _if_ you create this _pristine_ surface, you get a
wonder battery. On the other hand, if the surface has a defect in it anywhere
you get dendrites, and the subsequent shorts they cause.

When I read that part I said "Ok, so this will make great bespoke batteries
that the military can use for their human carried gear, but they will be too
expensive to compete with the existing lithium ion technology."

I really hope that I'm wrong here, and there is some process that can reliably
make massive numbers of pristine plated lithium / ceramic nodes but until we
see that I don't see this breakthrough making it out of the lab.

~~~
Itsdijital
Here'a post a made on reddit a few years ago about this very problem. I think
its pretty relevant here and just about anywhere else that does cutting edge
research:

"I want to expand on this because it is a point so often overlooked with all
these "holy shit we just created a new tech that is 10000% better" articles.
I'm gonna use a loose analogy to try and explain it.

Say you made a perfect cupcake. It is insanely fucking delicious, and will
revolutionize the idea of cupcakes. You spent years researching the art of
cupcakes, and now have written down the perfect combination of all cupcake
factors to make this divine cupcake. Your milk must come from a special dairy
who set aside the .02% of the milk that meets your needs, your flour must come
from one certain granary using a special indoor grown grain, the eggs from
your own 3 specially bred super pampered chickens. The mixing takes place over
eight unique specialized mixing procedures, with varying steps in between. The
cupcake paper is made from the wood of an endangered Guatemalan tree
(requiring federal clearance to obtain 10 sheets of it) and the baking tray
from a steel alloy made by one company in Japan, and it's not reusable. The
baking process has been tailored to the unique characteristics of your $20,000
1'x1'x1' oven. It takes 3 hours to bake with precise temperature control and
positioning adjustment needed throughout the process. The icing also requires
it's own set of unique ingredients and precise procedures. To make one of
these cupcakes takes 14 hours and costs $2600. If any corners are cut in the
process the whole thing falls apart. But done right it is indeed perfect.

A business man finds out about the cupcake that makes people cry tears of joy.
He comes to you and needs you to make 35,000 of them a day to sell for $10
each in order to be profitable. Logistically this is simply impossible. No
equipment on earth exists that can follow such precise steps for such large
quantities, much less a company capable of making it. Your oven costs 20 grand
and can bake one cupcake in 3 hours, you need 5000 in 3 hours. Your
ingredients come from sources that produce only a minute fraction of what you
would need. Never mind that they are scattered around the country making same
day delivery impossible short of having your own air fleet. Or that there are
only 3 chickens on earth that produce the right eggs. Or that the rare beetle
poop in the icing comes from an entomology professor in Peru. Even if you
could do all this you still need to adjust the recipe to account for being
handled by machines and conveyors. And packaging. And shipping. Oh and slash
the cost by a factor of 260.

Since this is all obviously impossible at the time (and for the foreseeable
future), you instead just submit the recipe to a food journal and let cooking
magazines and TV shows have a field day with sensational articles about the
coming cupcake jesus. You become well known and grant money for your legendary
lasagna project pours in. There never was any intention to bring this to
market, it was just a proof of concept with the added benefit of getting your
name out there. It's up to someone else down the road to pick it up and figure
out mass production.

If anything people should get more hyped about advancements in production
techniques. That's when you will actually get new shit in your hands."

~~~
ecpottinger
This happened to me in real life. I made a circuit board by hand in the 1980's
called the Amiga 14. Basicly if you had the board and a 16 MHz 68000 it double
the speed of your Amiga 1000.

I demo it at the World of Commodore in Toronto (I was a member of the Amiga
Developer Group that had a booth) the following week I go a call from a
gentleman, he wanted to buy 5,000 of them if I made them cheap enough.

But when I designed the circuit I just wanted something to speed up my
computer, I never planned a design for mass production. I tried for weeks to
change the design for mass production but I could not do it.

Today I know how to get the job done, but back then I did not have the
knowledge to mass produce anything I designed.

~~~
thesmok
That wasn't an impossible task back then, you could've partnered with a good
EE and got it shipped.

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Animats
The web site [1] shows a much lower level of hype. Listed problems:

\- Low-temperature performance

\- Density 1.8x to 5x liquid electrolyte

\- How to manufacture in quantity?

The increased density is a big problem. The ceramic materials are much heavier
than liquids. That seems inherent in using ceramics. This might be a good
technology for stationary applications, because of the faster charging and
lower fire risk. Depends on cost.

[1] [https://sakamoto.engin.umich.edu/](https://sakamoto.engin.umich.edu/)

~~~
tomp
Why is density a problem? The article claims improved energy _per gram_
(mAh/g), so the denser, the smaller, and thus the better...

~~~
sometimesijust
The article seems to skirt around this. It gives the energy per weight for
just part of the battery and then gives a theoretical energy per volume for
the whole battery. The claimed theoretical improvement for the whole battery
per volume is 2x so if the density of the whole battery increases 1.8 to 5x
then the solid state battery could be anywhere from slightly better (10%) to
significantly worse per weight.

------
syntaxing
I'm kind of surprised how people are complaining how we hear about many
battery break throughs yet we do not see any of them come to reality. Bridging
science to reality through engineering takes time. Lots of time. Think of
LEDs. We had those tiny dome shaped LEDs for the longest time. Yet it took
over two decades to get to useful LEDS to consumers we have today (like CREE).

~~~
apsec112
This isn't a question of lag time. The overwhelming majority of these
"breakthroughs" never come to market at all, and Li-Ion batteries are largely
the same as five years ago, save some modest cost reductions from economies of
scale. The big factors here are a) PR-driven media overhype, b) people not
understanding that the big challenge in batteries is not making a few very
high-performance batteries, but in building factories that can churn them out
economically at enormous scale.

~~~
rasz
>Li-Ion batteries are largely the same as five years ago

Try 20. Libretto 50 (Pentium 75MHz palmtop) was released in ~1998. It was
powered by two 1300 mAh 17670 cells. Today top of the line 17670 come in 1800
mAh. 20 years, less than 50% improvement.

~~~
hnuser1234
Panasonic makes a 3400mAh 18650, NCR-18650B, which is very similar in volume
and 2.62x higher capacity, ~2.55x higher density than the 1998 17670 cells.
Not to mention we also have power density-optimized cells now. High
performance DIY drone batteries are available that are 4 cells in series,
14.8-16.8 V, 1300 mah, about 150 grams, and can deliver 100+ A (1500 W), and
be recharged hundreds of times before significant degradation. 5 years ago, a
similar sized package could've delivered maybe 50 A peak, and it would degrade
much faster, only lasting a few dozen cycles at that load before losing
significant (20%) capacity. They would "puff" and overheat much more easily.

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Obi_Juan_Kenobi
There's good skepticism in this thread, but at the end of the day, I think
there's reason to be optimistic about better batteries.

* So many different technologies are showing some promise, and only one needs to be commercialized for a breakthrough. Put another way, this is an engineering an manufacturing issue, not a physics problem.

* The battery market is getting bigger and bigger, with ever more money at stake.

* Some real big investments into various battery startups and R&D programs have been made, at least several hundred million from various automakers. Either they're taking desperate risks, or else they see real progress on solid-state lithium batteries.

So often with technology, you don't see much progress until it arrives, and
then things seem to change overnight.

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driverdan
Keep in mind a few things here. This is a press release, and press releases
always hype their topic. Researchers discover ways to improve batteries
weekly. Until they can prove it's cost effective and mass producible it
doesn't matter to most of the world. Don't get excited until they start using
it in products.

------
acd
There is also another type of Lithium ion battery, LifePo4 which is lithium
Iron posphate batteries. These type of Lithium ion batteries are much safer
and are not likely to catch fire but they have slightly lower energy density.
Hopefully the Umich breakthrough can be combined with LifePo4 to give it
better energy density.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery)

The common battery type Lithium ion cobalt is bad for the environment due to
Cobalt mining in Congo. Cobalt is a conflict mineral. Lithium Cobolt batteries
are the type that catches fire. Lithium Cobolt is an environmental risk if it
leaks into the soil.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_cobalt_oxide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_cobalt_oxide)

Positive electrode [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-
ion_battery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery)

~~~
clankfan
Headway cells!

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donarb
NOVA did a show about batteries, including a researcher at Tufts University
who created lithium batteries that you could impale with a sharp object or cut
with scissors that would not catch fire even while continuously providing
power.

[https://www.pbs.org/video/nova-battery-wont-
explode/](https://www.pbs.org/video/nova-battery-wont-explode/)

------
hcknwscommenter
Paper here:

doi: 10.1016/j.jpowsour.2018.06.055

Not a material's scientist, but it seems that they identified the importance
of having a "pristine surface" and then developed a process of mechanical and
chemical treatments to obtain the "pristine surface" which involves sputter
coating with Au?

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jryan49
About time for another amazing battery breakthrough! I haven't seen one in a
few months. :P

~~~
gruturo
s/month/day/

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craftyguy
> U-M engineers created a ceramic layer that stabilizes the surface—keeping
> dendrites from forming and preventing fires

I'm curious how strong this ceramic layer is. When I hear 'ceramic' I think of
'brittle, fragile' materials, and I'm not sure having a battery that would
explode if dropped or hit would be much of an improvement.

~~~
AYBABTME
I used to have the same intuition but also just recently started to learn
about material sciences. They refer to 'ceramics' as a wide family of material
that is comparable to "metal" and "crystals" and the likes. These families are
usually categorized by the type of atomic bonds found in them. Example,
Wikipedia starts the article on "Ceramic" with:

    
    
       A ceramic is a non-metallic solid material comprising an 
       inorganic compound of metal, non-metal or metalloid atoms 
       primarily held in ionic and covalent bonds.
    

At least, if your mental model was about ceramic vases and ornamental objects.

~~~
craftyguy
Interesting, thank you for the explanation. I generally think of things like
tiles (e.g. like the ones on the space shuttle that were fragile) when I hear
ceramics.

------
dsfyu404ed
Sounds promising but I'm not going to count my chickens until they're in high
volume production. Lots of cool technologies never make it to the real world
at scale because they can't be manufactured cost effectively at scale because
of some little thing that doesn't seem like a big issue at first.

~~~
danimal88
Agreed. Rooting for them but the number of battery and solar breakthroughs
that don't get to market make it hard to get too excited on research + a pr
push.

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tankerdude
So many battery breakthroughs have been announced. Not one of the
"breakthroughs" for cars have been released to the public. Most are "5 years
away" or more.

Ionic with the polymer batteries looks promising, but again, as others have
stated, it's the manufacturing process that is rough.

Works great in the lab, but scaling what was done in the lab to the public is
really, really hard.

~~~
philipkglass
I agree that scaling is hard and progress is slow. I think that a major
breakthrough _has_ made it into cars, though: lithium ion batteries.

The 1990s-vintage GM EV1 used lead-acid or NiMH batteries. The earlier
generations of Prius used NiMH batteries too. The Tesla Roadster was the first
highway-legal serial production EV to use lithium ion batteries. It took 17
years after lithium ion batteries saw first commercial use in small electronic
devices (commercial batteries out in 1991, Roadster in 2008). Because, as you
say, scaling is hard.

Of course the first Roadsters now seem like old hat and every auto maker is
using lithium ion batteries. We're eager for the next, better _kind_ of
lithium battery. But just getting autos to use _any_ kind of lithium battery
was a big enough change that it deserved the "breakthrough" moniker, IMO.

~~~
flyinghamster
A major driving factor in the advancement of lithium-ion batteries for
automotive use was the patent issues surrounding large-format NiMH batteries.*
Once Chevron got its grubby hands on the NiMH patents, the technology was
effectively dead in the water.

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_encumbrance_of_large_au...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_encumbrance_of_large_automotive_NiMH_batteries)

Interesting that Patent #6969567 expires a week from today. I doubt that will
lead to a revival of NiMH technology, though.

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smaddox
Having previously worked in materials science (though not specialised in
battery tech), this does sound promising, but without the academic paper (is
there a prepub available?) it's impossible to know with any confidence.

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gsich
It's a breakhrough when it's shipped in devices. Only then, not before.

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sytelus
When you get the news articles with "breakthrough", just do Ctrl+F and type
"could". If you get hit in title or first paragraph, close your tab and move
on. You just came across another PR article on immature tech.

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castratikron
I wonder if a solid electrolyte would allow for sub-freezing charging of the
batteries.

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agumonkey
I wonder how much battery research as increased since ~Tesla

~~~
sdinsn
"research secured"

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xvf22
Congrats, hard not to be jaded at this point though. Does this address the
Nickel/Cobalt cathode issue at all?

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8bitsrule
Bah! in about 25 years BIC will be selling lighter-size fusion reactors. I'll
just wait.

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exabrial
I have nieces and nephews that can prove the fireproof claim invalid.

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swedish_mafia
Funding secured.

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curiousgal

        revolutionary_battery_tech_news++

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mavdi
Battery breakthrough articles are as reliable as apocalypse predictions.

~~~
gameswithgo
not quite that bad.

