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MIT discovers batteries with indefinite lifetimes using solid-state-electrolytes
- intrasight 11y agoNot sure if this is the same "breakthrough" https://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/yolks-and-shells-improve-rechargeable-batteries-0805 https://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/yolks-and-shells-improve-rec... It was also discussed in The Economist this week. Batter tech has been stuck in a rut for a long time so it's great news that better tech is in the way.
- iLoch 11y agoI don't know much about battery tech but I get the feeling that "rut" is actually just their business model. Hard to sell a lot of batteries/phones/etc. that work forever.
- reillyse 11y agoI was just chatting to someone about this today. I feel like my "honeymoon" period with my new iphone 6 is coming to an end. 6 months in and I'm starting to have to think about when I charge it. Definitely it's not in Apple's interest to solve this particular problem, especially when (I think) they've deliberately made the battery non-replaceable.
- henry_vonfire 11y agoWell, in my case, I was using a second hand Nexus One for years (almost 3 years if I remember it right) without problems with the battery. I think that if you respect the charging cycles, you make it last longer (I usually wait until 10% of battery left to charge it)
- piotrkaminski 11y agoFYI, waiting until a Li-ion battery is nearly fully discharged before recharging will actually shorten its life by 3-4x compared to recharging when it hits 50%. See: http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_li...
- henry_vonfire 11y agoReally? I've heard that by doing that what you are doing is reducing the time the battery will be charged (it's like instead of using 100% of your battery, it set its limit at 50%). I don't have the source where I saw this, sorry.
- piotrkaminski 11y agoYou may be thinking of the "memory effect" of old NiCad batteries, which indeed needed to be thoroughly discharged before recharging otherwise they'd lose capacity. However, LiIon is a different chemistry, and different rules apply. I don't know of any modern device that still uses NiCad, though I'm sure there's still some legacy niche where they're useful...
- madez 11y agoDo not follow his advice. To lessen the strain on your smartphone battery, keep it between 15% and 90% of charge and don't let it become too hot. Modern batteries are not like the old ones.
- chubs 11y agoYou can take it to the apple store to get the battery replaced FWIW
- swombat 11y agoI'm using an iPhone 5S bought almost two years ago, with no battery issues whatsoever (plug in overnight, use all day, don't worry about battery unless an app goes haywire and the phone is running hot for a few hours). My wife is still using her 4S - she also has no issues with the battery. #counter-anecdotes
- nugga 11y agoMaybe we will finally get laptop batteries that don't "mysteriously" die after their maximum charge drops to 50% of the original. I'm looking at you lenovo..
- tade 11y agoIt's not the same. This is the MIT press release https://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/solid-state-rechargeable-batteries-safer-longer-lasting-0817 https://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/solid-state-rechargeable-bat...
- jessaustin 11y agoThis really should be the link for this whole thread. First, it has some actual interesting details. Second, it hasn't been round-tripped through Google Translate.
- davnicwil 11y agoIt's been so stuck in a rut, relative to the demands of what we use it for, that it'd seem utterly magical for it to improve dramatically. Imagine being able to use a laptop, or a phone, for days without plugging in. Seems completely impossible now, and my mental model of power usage vs battery drain is so set at this point that I think I'd have a really hard time trusting a vastly better battery to really work, even after seeing it work for a few cycles - I'd always be thinking, can this really be happening? When's it going to fail? Wonder how long it would take for this to go away and just become the new norm? I'd love to look back on this post in a few years and laugh.
- stdbrouw 11y ago> Imagine being able to use a laptop, or a phone, for days without plugging in. A Kindle has a battery life of a couple of weeks (30+ hrs active use), but it's actually a mixed blessing. Daily charging is a nightly routine you get used to. Biweekly charging, you just end up forgetting when it's time to charge and don't have any power when you need it.
- Osmium 11y ago> you just end up forgetting when it's time to charge and don't have any power when you need it. This is just a design problem though. The Kindle should warn you when you only have a few days battery (or, say, a hundred page turns) left, or maybe an LED could light up to remind you, and it'd be fine. I say this as a mildly inconvenienced Kindle user myself, because I too forget to charge it...
- reacweb 11y agoI have to charge my electric car daily. If capacity was slightly increased, it would be biweekly. Do you think they should stop research ?
- tedsanders 11y agoBattery energy density is hard to improve. Lithium is already the smallest non-gas atom, and we're within an order of magnitude of its absolute limits. Even though it seems like batteries have improved a lot over the last two decades, the vast majority of that is due to electronics that consume less power, not increased battery capacity. That said, cost can still be reduced and cycle life can still be improved. And there are exotic ideas for better batteries too. [1] An article on the progress and limits of batteries: http://www.nature.com/news/the-rechargeable-revolution-a-better-battery-1.14815 http://www.nature.com/news/the-rechargeable-revolution-a-bet... (might be behind a paywall)
- camillomiller 11y agoIt's all quite generic in the press release. And, nobody even tries to answer the number one question: how long until batteries like this could eventually hit the market?
- will_hughes 11y agoThe other major issue being: How does this affect all the other parameters that make a battery useful? I mean, sure, an 'indefinite life' is fine, but not if it's got more limited charge/discharge rates, energy densities, etc.
- mpweiher 11y ago"The new battery also has an improved power capacity that is 20 to 30 percent higher than traditional models, and can endure frigid temperatures as well" Nothing about charge/discharge rates.
- bro-stick 11y agoIt's completely not characterized in any meaningful form. They shouldn't have made any claims to the media without a real demo and comparison to show with it. Otherwise, it does have a tendency to come off as unobtainium fogware.
- bro-stick 11y agoIt sounds like typical hand-waving prior to additional grant/paper rounds to explore it more. It would be more convincing if there a demo video showing charging and then discharging cycles based on a load like a phablet. The real proof would be temperature-compensated, high precision battery voltage/current logging, accurate to one microvolt/microampere respectively, to back up longevity claims with a measurably slower capacity decay, tested head-to-head against the best available batteries.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- madaxe_again 11y agoIs there an article on this which says something other than the same thing four times? Yes, I get they're replacing a liquid electrolyte with a solid one, but that's all this piece says. What electrolyte? Oh, and is it really infinite power as the article says? Of course not. Willing to wager this is just a breathless piece on carbon-air tech.
- sleepychu 11y agoThe lifetime refers to how many times you can charge and discharge the battery before it no longer works (if you have ever kept a rechargeable device for a long time you'll notice that the battery becomes less useful over time)
- afsina 11y agoWake me up when they have an actual reasonably priced working product in the market. This is getting tiresome as "breakthrough" news piled up but we are still using almost 10 year old technology.
- Ianvdl 11y agoR&D is not that simple and some of us appreciate this news. Coming to a thread only to complain that you can't have something immediately only adds to the overly negative feedback loop on HN.
- farresito 11y agoHis complain is not that he is not going to have it immediately, but that he is never going to have it. And I agree with him. We keep hearing of breakthroughs and the truth is that 99% of the time they vaporize. That said, I'm happy to hear the amount of research put into finding better batteries.
- Ianvdl 11y agoIt's always a possibility that we may never see this technology in use commercially, that does not mean that it is insignificant and cannot lead to an improved product later on. The work done here is still important regardless of whether or not we'll have it in our hands within the next five years.
- farresito 11y agoI agree that every bit of contribution is important. In fact, behind every big discovery there are tens of hundreds of smaller discoveries, and hearing news like this is fantastic. The thing though is that by defining every discovery as breakthrough, you end up confusing the readers and, more importantly, devaluing the discoveries that are really going to have a big impact.
- nmrm2 11y ago
- treha 11y agoLooks like a fake article the rest of the site is not working..
- 1ris 11y agoThe rest seems to work, but it seems to almost exclusively sports and celebrities.
- Zarathustra30 11y agoToyota already made a prototype solid-state last year. https://ecs.confex.com/ecs/imlb2014/webprogram/Paper33467.html https://ecs.confex.com/ecs/imlb2014/webprogram/Paper33467.ht...
- creshal 11y agoBattery prototypes are a dime a dozen, but none ever seem to reach the market.
- ZenoArrow 11y agoSome do... http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/174477-at-long-last-new-lithium-battery-tech-actually-arrives-on-the-market-and-might-already-be-in-your-smartphone http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/174477-at-long-last-new-l...
- pyre 11y ago> none ever seem to reach the market All batteries that you use today were (obviously) prototypes at some point in time. But you don't wait to prototype something until it's a done deal, you prototype to test. Are you really complaining that there isn't a higher success rate for all battery tests that are done?
- seesomesense 11y agoThe abstract http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nmat4369.html http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nmat43...
- asuffield 11y agoMy immediate observation is that "indefinite" means "unknown", not "unlimited". I'm not sure this is the word they wanted to use, but it may be a more accurate description.
- marcosdumay 11y agoWith a solid electrolyte, it means "we are not aware of any process that will limit their lifetime - but it must die some day".
- jeroen94704 11y agoAs I understand it, this does not mean you can power your laptop forever with a single charge, only that it can be recharged an indefinite number of times.
- electricblue 11y agoRight, they did not successfully rewrite the properties of matter and energy.
- fab13n 11y agoCars, and maybe off-grid houses, are way more exciting than a laptop which becomes obsolete almost as fast as its battery wears off anyway.
- ChuckMcM 11y agoI have "battery breakthrough fatigue" so announcing a lab result isn't really going to get me excited. A licensing deal and a factory being built, much more exciting. Interesting challenge of the terms indefinite and infinite. I read it as batteries that may die may not after every action (which would actually be indeterminate batteries :-)) rather than an infinite number of cycles.
- imglorp 11y agoWhat seems to be the trouble getting some of these to market? There seems to plenty of demand. Is this a "Who Killed the Electric Car" conspiracy thing? A VC thing? Or a vaporware/chemistry-is-hard thing?
- ProblemFactory 11y agoI guess that most of these are a science journalism thing: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd051809s.gif http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd051809s.gif For example, there was news recently about a breakthrough discovery of a -70C superconductor. The media spun it as if loss-free electricity transport and maglev trains are just around the corner. But in reality, this material (Hydrogen Sulfide) required 2 million atmospheres of pressure for superconducting at this temperature. No conspiracy or lack of funding is behind the lack of practical applications, in this case it is just utterly unfeasible outside of a laboratory. But even if the material will never make it to the market, it's still a scientific breakthrough that will give scientists new understanding of how the processes work, and perhaps lead to other discoveries with more practical applications in 2, 20 or 200 years.
- ohitsdom 11y agoLet me guess: 3-5 years from hitting the market?
- exodust 11y agoThis is great. Batteries could at last hold sentimental value as we pass them on to our children. "my granddaddy gave this battery to my daddy, who gave it to me before he died" etc. Seriously, when I think about battery tech advancement, I think about all those millions of people doing it tough in temporary communities and camps with limited power resources and inadequate infrastructure. I don't get tired of hearing about new battery tech.
- beltex 11y agoExciting! ”My top advice really for anyone who says they got some breakthrough battery technologies is please send us a sample cell. Don’t send us PowerPoint, ok, just send us one cell that works with all appropriate caveats, that would be great. That sorts out the nonsense and the claims that aren’t actually true. Talk is super cheap. The battery industry has to have more BS in it than any industry I’ve ever encountered, it’s insane.” Elon Musk https://youtu.be/TzquC0USTEA?t=19m8s https://youtu.be/TzquC0USTEA?t=19m8s