4 ms·

Nobel Prize: Lithium Ion Battery Creators Led a Revolution

46 points by Osiris30 7y ago

neonate 7y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20191012004755/https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-11/nobel-prize-lithium-ion-battery-creators-led-a-revolution https://web.archive.org/web/20191012004755/https://www.bloom...
hinkley 7y ago
There was a lot of hope in the '00's that we'd see another revolution from LIon the way we did from NiMH and NiCD before that, but it just never happened. Everyone was projecting out electric cars and busses and planes and such based on a similar uptick. Although, if we're really honest, there's a kind of Moore's Law of battery improvement and it's something like 6% a year, so that's a doubling every 12 years. Every new tech that swamps that performance curve also has extremely high manufacturing costs, poor yields, or both. You could almost predict when (if ever) they would become commercially viable by figuring out where the price/performance lines crossed. If anyone tried to accelerate that crossover point they did it by reducing the performance of the product to make it cheaper to build or more reliable. For example, thicker membranes reduce specific energy but might be easier or safer to build.
- rafaelvasco 7y ago
  Yeah maybe chemical batteries are nearing their limit in terms of technology, at least, the classical concept of the battery; Or maybe we'll discover some new element or something. Who knows;
  - torpfactory 7y ago
    What is the limit? I’ve heard a ton of different opinions on what it might be.
    - hinkley 7y ago
      I stopped doing any reading in this space when I stopped trying to invest in any power storage tech, but this is what I recall: Supercapacitors store electrons directly instead of chemical reactions. They have much much lower capacities at present (per unit volume for certain, per kg is a narrower margin), but you can pump and drain them quickly without damaging them, and hundreds to thousands of times as frequently. But we construct these materials using chemical reactions, so they are far away from their theoretical limits. Every few years lately, someone tries to blur the lines between battery and capacitor by working on chemistries that can also store electrons. What I can't recall is the degree to which any of those bested LIon in bench-top tests. What I wonder is if lithography will ever enter into this, how many more features per mm^2 the equipment would have to create to make an equivalent material, and how much cheaper they'd have to get per feature before it were financially feasible. [Edit to add:] I completely spaced on the fact that people are experimenting with graphene to build supercaps, so we may get closer to that limit relatively sooner than later. Since many commercial supecaps are essentially doped charcoal, this isn't the graphene bandwagon it first might seem.
    - rafaelvasco 7y ago
      Well, in truth there's no limit. It's only limited by our creativity and knowledge;

46 points by Osiris30 7y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20191012004755/https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-11/nobel-prize-lithium-ion-battery-creators-led-a-revolution https://web.archive.org/web/20191012004755/https://www.bloom...

hinkley 7y ago

There was a lot of hope in the '00's that we'd see another revolution from LIon the way we did from NiMH and NiCD before that, but it just never happened. Everyone was projecting out electric cars and busses and planes and such based on a similar uptick. Although, if we're really honest, there's a kind of Moore's Law of battery improvement and it's something like 6% a year, so that's a doubling every 12 years. Every new tech that swamps that performance curve also has extremely high manufacturing costs, poor yields, or both. You could almost predict when (if ever) they would become commercially viable by figuring out where the price/performance lines crossed. If anyone tried to accelerate that crossover point they did it by reducing the performance of the product to make it cheaper to build or more reliable. For example, thicker membranes reduce specific energy but might be easier or safer to build.

rafaelvasco 7y ago
Yeah maybe chemical batteries are nearing their limit in terms of technology, at least, the classical concept of the battery; Or maybe we'll discover some new element or something. Who knows;
- torpfactory 7y ago
  What is the limit? I’ve heard a ton of different opinions on what it might be.
  - hinkley 7y ago
    I stopped doing any reading in this space when I stopped trying to invest in any power storage tech, but this is what I recall: Supercapacitors store electrons directly instead of chemical reactions. They have much much lower capacities at present (per unit volume for certain, per kg is a narrower margin), but you can pump and drain them quickly without damaging them, and hundreds to thousands of times as frequently. But we construct these materials using chemical reactions, so they are far away from their theoretical limits. Every few years lately, someone tries to blur the lines between battery and capacitor by working on chemistries that can also store electrons. What I can't recall is the degree to which any of those bested LIon in bench-top tests. What I wonder is if lithography will ever enter into this, how many more features per mm^2 the equipment would have to create to make an equivalent material, and how much cheaper they'd have to get per feature before it were financially feasible. [Edit to add:] I completely spaced on the fact that people are experimenting with graphene to build supercaps, so we may get closer to that limit relatively sooner than later. Since many commercial supecaps are essentially doped charcoal, this isn't the graphene bandwagon it first might seem.
  - rafaelvasco 7y ago
    Well, in truth there's no limit. It's only limited by our creativity and knowledge;