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Graphene improves lithium-ion battery capacity and recharge rate by 10x
- jws 15y ago… store 10 times more power… …after 150 charge/discharge cycles, is also five times more effective than any lithium-ion battery currently on the market Is this the positive way of saying they lose half of their capacity after 150 cycles? Ten times capacity is certainly a game changer for everything from wireless ear buds to electric cars, but * week-long smartphone batteries within a couple of years* sounds optimistic for something that is fabricated at the atomic level. What exists on the market now that is designed at the atomic level and mass produced?
- mrsebastian 15y agoSilicon chips? FWIW, the holes are created using 'a chemical oxidation process' -- which I suspect can be done on a large scale. If someone can read the actual paper and check out how they made the holes, though, that'd be cool.
- lini 15y agoUsual Li-Ion batteries get a bit over 1000 cycles, so if this is 10 times more power, it provides more power for 150 cycles than a normal Li-Ion for its lifetime.
- KaeseEs 15y agoNo they don't. Degradation of lithium-ion batteries is a function of temperature, time since manufacture and charge level rather than charge/discharge cycles. If you keep the battery cool and don't discharge it below 20% or so, it will last a very long time. If you keep it hot and constantly do full discharges, it will be dead very quickly.
- onemoreact 15y agoYou need to discharge them really slowly to if you want to keep them cool. So, there is a link between discharging and temperature assuming a high power device.
- khafra 15y agoLiquid cooling for batteries wouldn't be worth it in earbuds, but it probably would in an electric car.
- dangrossman 15y agoWhich is why battery packs in Tesla cars are liquid-cooled.
- onemoreact 15y agoTesla battery's still get hot, just not as hot as they would get with more limited cooling.
- bluedanieru 15y agoSmall aside here: Li-ion tech is a major pain in my ass. Storing them discharged damages them. Storing them charged damages them. Keeping them topped off damages them. Fully discharging them damages them but your battery might have a protection circuit so don't worry about it. But it might not so worry about it. You've apparently got to store them half-charged for optimal lifetime but there is a lot of wrong information out there. I think I want to power my devices with disposables, thanks :-)
- itsnotvalid 15y agoSince we can't control the discharging condition and rate most of the time, and today's design often stick the battery to a heat source. Since I am no expert in chemistry, I rather point to an article here: http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_li... Basically, the capacity degrades over charge/discharge cycles. The reason is pretty simple to explain, because you can't really operate the batteries in perfect condition, it always get worse while discharging and charging it. The other conclusion of that report points to the fact that depth of discharge is related too. So instead of using it from 100% to 0% (actually 0% doesn't mean nothing left, it just means the phone can't operate on that voltage), recharge as soon as you have a plug.
- snewman 15y agoSeems to me that if this proves out, and can be made affordably, the most exciting application would be electric cars -- no more range penalty vs. gasoline. Anyone know enough to comment on the likely applicability?
- dlikhten 15y agommmm electric cars... 10x the range of current cars... thats what... cross country in one charge? can anyone argue with that? Ok fine 10x is not cross country... but it is 2000 miles per f-ing charge!
- planckscnst 15y agoI'd rather have 200 miles and lighter/cheaper(? at least in terms of environmental costs) batteries.
- TheAmazingIdiot 15y agoIn environmental costs, I'd much rather have FeNi chemistry fully explored. Nickel iron batteries can be abused by under and over charging, short circuiting heat, cold, vibration, and other effects and still last decades. Jay Leno has an antique car that still has a working FeNi battery. I think it needs topped off with distilled water every so often. The electrolyte is KOH so it even acts as a preservative. The only problem with the reaction is it's slow to charge and discharge.
- polshaw 15y agoWhy is it that people have so many diverse opinions that aren't fully informed when it comes to energy?? It may have one benefit, but 30 seconds on wikipedia informs me that it requires 5 times the mass and 20 times the volume of lithium ion to give equal energy output. Which makes it a complete non starter for anything mobile.
- TheAmazingIdiot 15y ago
- sycren 15y agoSo how long do you reckon we will have to wait for something like this? I'm still waiting for lithium-air batteries from MIT http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/better-battery-storage-0725.html http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/better-battery-storage-07...
- lysol 15y agoStill waiting? It takes longer than four months to bring new technology from research to market. Put up some money for investing in manufacturing and maybe your complaint would be valid.
- aidenn0 15y agoPatience. It's usually a minimum of 5 years for tech to go from the lab to commercial use, and often 10 years before it's in common use. Furthermore since there are probably dozens of competing technologies currently in the lab for energy storage, most of them won't ever make mainstream commercial use.
- danmaz74 15y agoThis would be a real game changer for electric cars. Even a "mere" 3x enhancement would already make them really competitive with combustion engines ones, but with 10x they would just be better than our traditional cars. Let's hope this technology can be industrialized in an economic way.
- Torn 15y agoIt'll surely be patented and sat on for a while at a very high price. My bet is we'll need to wait $time_of_release + 10 years until we see things working out over traditional cars.
- danmaz74 15y agoIt will be patented - yes. Sat on at a very high price - I don't think so. Even if you only think about maximizing profits, with a technology like this you would make much more money by creating a new market (mass produced electric cars) with lower margins and very big numbers than with high margins and very little numbers. On the other hand, if the technology required to mass produce this kind of batteries will be too new, it could take time to scale it and bring costs down. Let's hope it isn't too innovative.
- tsotha 15y agoYou can't "sit on" patents. The whole point of the patent system is to get an idea out there so people can use it. As a patent holder you're required to license your invention for a reasonable amount (I'm not really sure how that's determined - probably in court). If you don't, a judge can put your invention in the public domain and give you nothing. The stories you hear about the 300 mpg carburetor and machines that produce power from the spin of electrons? These devices, if they actually existed, would have to be bought and hidden away without ever entering the patent system. And the buyer (oil companies, is it?) would have to take the chance somebody else would patent the invention for which he paid millions.
- nknight 15y agoCitation, please. I've never heard of compulsory licensing occurring in the US outside of government contracts and anti-trust settlements.
- maeon3 15y agoWhat is the safety of this battery? At 10x power we are looking at potential explosion for eletric cars instead of raging fire for gas cars... Does it work in 30 below zero?
- sounds 15y agoAs just a lay commenter on ycombinator, I can point out that they're just changing the anode atomic structure. They're not changing the Lithium salt. So your concerns about safety are fine - this should only be as safe as any other Lithium-ion or Lithium-polymer battery.
- JonnieCache 15y ago>this should only be as safe as any other Lithium-ion or Lithium-polymer battery. So, they will explode fairly often then.
- tsotha 15y agoWhy do you assume it's not as safe as gas? Gas has a similar energy/m3 profile. And not everyone cares whether it works at thirty below. Most places don't get that cold.
- Torn 15y agoIs there anything graphene can't do?
- knieveltech 15y agoSo far: make it to market. But we're optimistic.
- troymc 15y agoHere's the press release from Northwestern University: http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2011/11/batteries-energy-kung.html http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2011/11/batte... and the associated journal paper, published in Advanced Energy Materials: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aenm.201100426/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aenm.201100426/ab...
- wanorris 15y agoWhile this could change the game for electric cars (Edit: as others have already been discussing), it would also be an amazing advance for cell phones and computers. Imagine a cell phone that had a lighter battery but still lasted through a week of use between charges. Or an incredibly thin and light battery (and a correspondingly thin and light phone) that still lasted a couple of days. Or a notebook that didn't need all the power management to dial down the CPU and GPU when unplugged, and could barrel away full speed and still last for a day or two. You'd still have to worry about heat dissipation, but there are plenty of fast notebooks that handle that fine when plugged in. Or an iPad with the battery life of a Kindle. Or a Kindle that you charged once a year.
- smd80 15y agoBut can you imagine trying to find the charging cable for your Kindle after a year?
- FrojoS 15y agoFor a notebook you still want to reduce energy usage. All that heat has to go somewhere and a hot device and loud fan are very annoying. Apart from that, I agree. Any of this new battery types will first be used in small, high priced devices.
- itsnotvalid 15y agoOr they can reduce the size of the batteries to cut weight.
- lclaude01 15y agoFrom a symposium on Graphene at Mcgill earlier this year. One study presented was Graphene/Metal contact http://www.physics.mcgill.ca/~maassenj/aps/2011-March-meeting/APS_2011.ppt.pdf http://www.physics.mcgill.ca/~maassenj/aps/2011-March-meetin...
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- scythe 15y agoFor the record, there are a lot of experimental battery technologies out there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Variations_in_materials_and_construction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Variations_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-sulfur_battery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-sulfur_battery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanowire_battery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanowire_battery Just... one of these will probably catch on, yes, and that's awesome, but we've come up with so many different ideas that at this point, demonstrating a high-capacity lithium battery prototype is the Aristocrats joke of battery science.
- leoc 15y agoAnd the promised capacity increase is always 10x, neither more nor less.
- scythe 15y agoLithium-sulfur is an older, more well-studied technique, and it only promises a 4x increase. There are still quite a few kinks to be worked out but I think it has the best potential of the bunch for the near future.
- guimarin 15y agoI still don't understand why people think this will do anything for electric cars. The bottleneck is how long it takes to charge your car. If you have a 60KW/hr pack, you can only charge it so fast with a 110v/20amp jack (for the sake of pie in the sky projections assume 50% charging efficiency between charger and battery). Period the end. you could always do 220v/30amps, or 208v/30amps/3phase. or 440v/1000amps. the tradeoff is in how many idiots electrocute themselves. It never ceases to amaze me how people don't get this simple simple fact. It's like saying that you can fill up a swimming pool faster because you've made a sturdier garden hose.
- ljlolel 15y agoThat's pretty short-sighted Mike. First, a 10x battery boost would mean you don't have to recharge the car fully over a week. This is also a boon for battery swapping stations which are bein built in Israel and other places.
- guimarin 15y agolol. it's like you're trying to troll me. #5,612,606.
- ljlolel 15y agoHe's talking about this patent, by the way, which I know he made: http://www.patents.com/us-5612606.html http://www.patents.com/us-5612606.html
- Dylan16807 15y agoBut that patent's going to be expired by the time these batteries are ready.
- Maxious 15y agoShai Agassi's patent #7,993,155 for a charging connector even references this one. Doesn't look like they consider it a problem.
- pilom 15y agoSo now the battery in my laptop will have 10x the energy in it when it explodes. It will be even more like carrying a bomb around with you.
- mkramlich 15y agonot mentioned in the article, but this could be a huge help for electric cars, and to the solar power industry.