
New lithium-ion battery design – 2,000x more powerful, recharges 1,000x faster - derpenxyne
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/153614-new-lithium-ion-battery-design-thats-2000-times-more-powerful-recharges-1000-times-faster
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icegreentea
For people having trouble interpreting the graph, the legend from the actual
paper says:

"The energy and power density of our microbattery cells (A–H) at low to high C
rates, along with previous microbattery cells having 3D electrodes (MB1
through MB3). The plot also includes the performance range of conventional
power technologies and commercial batteries from A123 (high power) and Sony
(high energy)."

Where C rates stand for charge rates, with 1C being able to charge the full
capacity of the battery in 1 hour.

The key take away for the new design's performance isn't the one quoted in the
title (of the submission or the article), but rather "Compared with
conventional supercapacitors, our microbattery delivers 10 × the power of a
supercapacitor at comparable energy density, delivers 10 × the energy of a
supercapacitor at comparable power density or has 10 × smaller volume than a
supercapacitor at comparable performance".

Just by glancing at the graph, you can see that the design is orders of
magnitudes less energy dense than today's lithium-ion batteries. This
advancement will make high-power applications more feasible, but will probably
not do very much to increase your phone/laptop's battery life.

~~~
gabipurcaru
Electric cars?

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icegreentea
Well... it's tricky. If you assume that current electric cars have the
performance of that A123 battery from the graph, and then pick something in
the middle of the spread of the colourful dots, you get a roughly 1 order
decrease in energy density, and a 1 order increase in power density. So,
taking the Model S as an example, you have a 300 mile range, and a charge time
of like 45 minutes at a super charger.

So... now you end up with like a 30-60 mile range range, and can charge up
fully in like 3-5 minutes. So we've brought charge times into the realm of
filly up gas, but you're doing it waaay more often.

If this is a useful advancement or not depends completely on what type of
infrastructure we want to envision. I would certainly love a world where this
was possible/feasible, but it's certainly not a grand slam.

~~~
jguimont
Could electric car battery use a dual type battery pack to optimize charging
and range?

~~~
chongli
The Tesla Model S already uses 7000 individual battery cells. This is how it's
able to charge as quickly as it does with the supercharger. The main
limitation of household charging is lack of power.

~~~
reportingsjr
That isn't necessarily true. Them using small batteries to make a larger
battery is what allows them to make their car sized batteries cheaper, since
the smaller sized batteries are already mass produced for things like laptops.
For charging time it depends on how those batteries are connected.

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lutusp
This is a classic case of a submission title taking liberties with the meaning
of the article it links.

This submission's title: "New lithium-ion battery 2000 times more powerful,
recharges 1000 times faster"

The actual title: "New lithium-ion battery design that’s 2,000 times more
powerful, recharges 1,000 times faster"

The missing word is "design", a word that is crucial to the meaning of the
article. The article discusses _a design for a battery_ , not a battery. How
important is that? Here's the last sentence in the linked article:

"For this to occur, though, the University of Illinois will first have to
prove that their technology scales to larger battery sizes, and that the
production process isn’t prohibitively expensive for commercial production."

It's a design, not a battery.

The solution to this problem, as I have pointed out many times before, is to
_copy the article's title, do not invent your own_.

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jack-r-abbit
> So far, the researchers have used this tech to create a button-sized
> microbattery, and you can see in the graph below how well their battery
> compares to a conventional Sony CR1620 button cell.

That sounds like a battery to me. The new design has actually been built and
tested. The quote you pulled out refers to scaling it up to things like lasers
and F1 cars. A button-sized battery sounds fine for a lot of electronics
today. Just not an F1 car.

~~~
Someone
Building one in the lab likely does not give you the ability to build a
million of them at a decent price in a factory.

Yield probably is low, and the current process will likely be way too labour
intensive.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
True. But lutusp was shitting all over the submitter for dropping the almighty
"design" word from the title and then claimed this is not an article about a
battery but only about a design for one. That claim is wrong. It is more than
a design... it is an actual battery. Maybe there is only one unit that exists.
But that is still one more than a design. And if the tech proves sound but too
labor intensive, your next thing to tackle is to make it easier to build.
Isn't that how bleeding-edge innovation works?

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alecdibble
Bleeding edge innovation usually occurs when researchers and engineers make
progress using known or easily-modifiable processes. Most "breakthroughs" are
dead-ends because process or scaling weren't considered in the initial
research.

True technological innovation needs not just engineering feasibility but also
economic feasibility. I'm not trying to say that the research that "dead ends"
is pointless. Progress is progress. All I am trying to say is that it doesn't
mean economic viability is right around the corner.

Often, researchers are well aware of scaling or manufacturing hurdles when
they embark on the experiments. For the sake of academic careers and exposure,
the research will get hyped regardless of the viability of implementing the
research.

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ChuckMcM
To be clear, this is the ExtremeTech blog, all of their commentary leans
heavily toward wishful thinking.

For context a number of surface area improvements in Lithium-Ion anodes have
failed at scale due to the creation of lithium dendrites (metal 'wires' that
grow during recharge) which have either rendered large sections of the anode
worthless and reduced the capacity of the battery, or created rapid exothermic
reactions (aka fires) in the battery.

~~~
g8oz
Its on the BBC New site as well which is actually much less clear in
explaining that this research is applicable to the supercapacitor space as
opposed to 'normal' Li* batteries.

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ck2
Where's that xkcd chart when I need it for every announcement like this...

Ah here we go: <http://xkcd.com/678/>

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idupree
To be clear: high power density, but similar energy density to current
batteries.

~~~
fryguy
At some level, it doesn't make too much sense to go that much higher in the
power (which I'm assuming is the same as discharge rate, since voltage is
fixed). Current lipoly batteries are rated at 30C (Amps per watt*hour).
Essentially this means that the battery can be fully discharged in a minimum
of two minutes. It doesn't seem like there are that many applications that
require higher power output.

~~~
baq
cars, for one, especially if high power output correlates with high power
input for charging.

~~~
ajross
Exactly. It's very rare to find an application where a rapid _discharge_
matters (battery powered guided missile maybe? A drone launcher that boosts a
device to altitude and then comes back down on a parachute?), but a rapid
charge speed is almost universally desired. At the numbers being quoted here,
for example, it would become faster to simply charge your phone than swap the
fiddly battery.

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Florin_Andrei
The title is completely misleading.

~~~
wmf
Yeah, it's literally correct if you understand the difference between power
and energy but most people don't.

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mbell
Including the author considering he is claiming that this would leed to
smaller cell phone batteries...

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Aardwolf
Uh, let's combine this with the other 3 articles claiming a 10x more long
lasting battery, and we'll have a 1000x longer lasting, 2000x more powerful,
1000x faster recharging battery.

I really love progress, but I've seen too many of these "N times better"
articles and no actual consumption products by now.

Same with these memristors, MRAM and feRAM, and 1000x faster internet.

~~~
ajuc
> 1000x faster internet.

I don't know about you, but my first internet connection was 56 kbps, now I
can easily buy 100 Mbps one (I don't cause 10 Mbps is good enough for me) and
it would be much cheaper than what I had to pay 15 years ago for that 56 kbps,
even including inflation.

Progress is here, we just don't notice (also media and inventors overhype).
But in the end the progress is still happening unbeliveably fast. It's decimal
order of magnitude every 5 years!

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yoava
The one thing they did not mention was the battery weight and size. The
biggest barrier for electric cars and other battery uses is the ratio of
energy to weight and size.

Today, this ratio enables about 70-100 miles travel for an electric car with a
similar weight and size as a gasoline car.

will be interesting to follow this initiative.

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transfire
If a car battery can be made to charge to 50% capacity in about a minute with
a total range greater than 60 miles or so, then a very novel solution to
charging electric cars becomes possible -- induction coils at stop lights and
along highways.

~~~
ajuc
In the bigger cities and between them we could just connect electric cars to
grid the whole time, and put energy meters in each car. Like trolleys. No need
for big batteries inside the car, just supercapacitors for a few minutes worth
of driving if there's some problem with the grid and you need to park safely.

I wonder if people could buy electric cars like they buy cellphones - you sign
a contract with a provider, you pay X USD per month for the car and access to
the grid, additionaly you have access to free regular car if you need to drive
somehwere the grid doesn't exist yet(but you pay for the fuel by yourself).

The problem is infrastructure, I think.

~~~
eru
Some busses have been running on this kind of wiring in cities for ages.

~~~
ajuc
Yep, we have trolleys in my city and they work OK. Still less popular/more
difficult routes are served by regular buses.

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gambiting
"2000 times more powerful, recharges 1000 times faster " - so it will still
take twice as long to charge it fully then?

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gvb
No, the energy _density_ is not all that unusual. Assuming the battery is
2000AH and is 100% efficient, the "2000 times more powerful" means you can
(theoretically!) _discharge_ it 2000 times faster than the benchmark battery
(e.g. 2000A over 1 hour vs. 1A over 2000 hours).

The 1000x recharge rate means you can put the energy back in 1000x faster than
the benchmark battery (e.g. 1000A x 2 hours vs. 1A x 2000 hours).

Due to the energy density being comparable, I would expect the actual _size_
of a 2000AH New Improved[tm] lithium-ion battery would be comparable to the
size of a traditional 2000AH "benchmark" battery.

Disclaimer: All the numbers made up out of thin air using values that were
easy to do in my head.

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guilloche
It discharges/charges much faster, that is all about the new battery.

Discharging fast make it more possible to catch fire.

Overall, it seems not very useful for smartphones.

~~~
tr4656
But nowhere does this article even talk about using this for smartphones or in
any form of application.

~~~
panacea
"In real-world use, this tech will probably be used to equip consumer devices
with batteries that are much smaller and lighter — imagine a smartphone with a
battery the thickness of a credit card, which can be recharged in a few
seconds."

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ironchief
Design != Build != Shipping

I love this research but have seen similar articles for the past decade. At
scale production is hard, just ask A123.

~~~
lutusp
The ideal: Design, build, sell.

The real: Sell, build, design.

:)

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DigitalSea
I wonder if 2,000x more powerful means generates 2,000x more heat and the risk
of exploding is increased by 2,000x as well?

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dbecker
The most exciting application they can imagine for a super-battery is smaller
cell phone batteries?

That doesn't seem very forward thinking.

~~~
VLM
Excellent surface area to volume ratio for cooling.

If you want to shove tens of amps into something tiny its gotta be nearly
perfectly efficient and/or excellent cooling and/or be tiny to get a great
surface area/volume ratio.

I bet this would rock for bluetooth earpieces.

Also people expect some apps like cars to last for 15 years, but if you're
"nervous" about long life, your stereotypical disposable cellphone is a great
app.

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juskrey
Great, my Android will be alive 6 hours longer

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peg_leg
Oh good, I can play Angry Birds longer.

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umarrana
And it will be available in 10 years.

