
Stanford researchers seek 'Holy Grail' in battery design - xmpir
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/july/pure-lithium-battery-072914.html
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Xcelerate
Very interesting. I'll be following this. My research is actually in designing
and understanding lithium-ion anodes.

If you're curious, the material I'm using consists of an all-carbon anode with
crystalline and amorphous domains. It performs about the same as current state
of the art Li-ion battery anodes; however, the cost of manufacturing is
incredibly cheap since the composite material is derived from low-cost plant
matter (lignin). Plus, it lasts for many more charge-discharge cycles (well,
there's actually a trade-off between capacity and cycling performance; you
have to pick a middle-ground).

I'm performing reactive molecular dynamics simulations on computational models
of these new composite systems to try and understand why they have such high
performance. It's pretty cool work really.

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eddotman
The head researcher here, Yi Cui, is a pretty baller dude. I met him at a PhD
admit visitation weekend, and his group was the most popular by far. Some of
the admitted students joked that competition to get into his group was harder
than getting into Stanford in the first place.

I suspect that his research success is partly due to some snowball effect
though - he has an extraordinary amount of postdocs working for him and access
to a lot of money/equipment - which are both pretty great assets to have in
engineering (and tend to grow as a function of present size).

Anyway, not to take away from the research he's doing. A lot of the stuff he
puts out is very cool; I look forward to seeing more.

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trhway
>"Of all the materials that one might use in an anode, lithium has the
greatest potential. Some call it the Holy Grail," said Yi Cui, a Stanford
professor of materials science and engineering and leader of the research
team. "It is very lightweight and it has the highest energy density. You get
more power per volume and weight, leading to lighter, smaller batteries with
more power."

while it is theoretically true, the lithium is only part of the whole weight.
The metals of the same group - potassium or sodium (though sodium seems to
have more issues than potassium) anode looks order of magnitude easier (on the
order of Al anodes while still being rechargeable) and provide almost the
close to lithium perf/weight when whole battery is considered.

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dm2
Sweet, partner with any battery manufacturer, Tesla, or the US military and
lets get this technology fast-tracked. Higher density batteries can't come
soon enough.

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Someone1234
Fast track what? Per the article this research still has a long way to go both
in terms of efficiency but more in terms of recharge cycles before it is even
near usable. It isn't even on level with Lithium Ion batteries yet.

Even if the US military and Tesla got behind this who are they going to bring
in to help? This Stanford team is near the best we have right now (if not the
absolute best).

Now when they're producing batteries which are better than what is already
available on the market AND are near as safe (if you can call current Lithium
Ion batteries "safe") then, sure, fast track away.

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dm2
The article says that they've made significant breakthroughs and have solved
some of the problems but there are still a few that they are working on.

The ones that are already solved need methods of mass-production, which
requires funding and highly skilled researchers. Get a team together under the
researchers to work on every part of this battery problem so that when all of
the aspects of the advanced battery are figured out it's ready to be mass-
produced as soon as possible. I'm not sure, just anything at all to increase
the speed of this work.

Sure, being the best matters a lot, but it's also about trying numerous
methods and having different approaches and specialties. Going from the lab to
mass-production is something that the researchers in the article can't focus
on if they are still working on other parts of the battery. I'm sure there are
people who would be willing to help, but not for free.

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seanflyon
> Get a team together under the researchers to work on every part of this
> battery problem

That sounds like what is already happening. This is a well funded well staffed
lab we are talking about.

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brentjanderson
This begs the followup question, "What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen
Tesla?"

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bitJericho
What do you mean? An X or S model?

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glibgil
This in HN. No references please.

