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Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?
- jsLavaGoat 2mo agoWhen titles with rhetorical questions sound almost like dumb questions.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- NooneAtAll3 2mo agohave I misread or 3/4 of the article explained what a battery is and only final tiny part got to "short-circuiting dendrites don't happen without electrolite"?
- wolfi1 2mo agodendrites are an inherent problem with liquid elctrolytes and I would have emphasized that as well
- api 2mo agoTangential to the main article point but… The energy density scatter plot is physically correct but misleading and everyone makes this mistake. From an engineering point of view you have to use work delivered at the end of the drive train not fuel raw energy content. When you do that lithium ion batteries compare more favorably to liquid fuels. That’s because the conversion path is more than 90% efficient. For ICE engines you’re starting with only 20-40% Carnot efficiency (depending on how good and in good shape the engine is) and then losing in the transmission and then losing more because ICE cars have more other gears and moving parts. Power to wheel is pretty terrible. Most of the energy from gasoline heats the air around the car. This is also why you get outrageous sounding but accurate things like: an EV charged on 100% coal fired electricity emits less carbon than a typical gasoline car. The fact that coal is literal pure carbon fuel is made up for by the high thermal efficiency of a giant supercritical steam turbine vs a small piston engine. Coal burns real hot too (steeper thermal gradient). So more of the energy from coal ends up doing actual work vs heating the air. (Well directly heating the air I mean.)
- thelastgallon 2mo agoYes, electricity should be the only abstraction layer to deliver energy to end user. We can extract a lot more energy from fossil fuels in large scale plants and also continuously switch out dirtier fuels with clean energy. For example, no need to build natural gas infrastructure to every home. Use induction stoves (or electric coil -- already 67% of homes). Heat pump water heater instead of gas. And heat pump for HVAC. If all energy bills are consolidated as electricity (instead of gas, natural gas and electricity), most people would install solar on their rooftops, buy EVs, and save ~$1000/month on energy bills.
- mb7733 2mo ago> We can extract a lot more energy from fossil fuels in large scale plants This isn't true at all for natural gas. Burning it for heat in the home is much more efficient than burning it in a plant, converting it to electricity, transferring that electricity, then turning that electricity into heat.
- idontwantthis 2mo agoThat is false. Heat pumps are more efficient than burning gas in a home even when the electricity came from burning gas.
- mb7733 2mo agoIt does not follow that "We can extract a lot more energy from fossil fuels in large scale plants"
- maxwwwt 2mo agoThe theoretical efficiency maximum for burning gas in a home is 100%. Most systems won't hit that because they need to vent waste gases, which carry some heat away. Heat pumps are significantly more efficient than 100%. They can get to 500% efficiency. So no, it's definitely not more efficient to burn gas in a home. (To say nothing of the safety of running gas lines to every house.)
- enslavedrobot 2mo agoSolid state batteries come in several flavours. Most of them don't stop dendrites. The flavour you want is polymer, single ion conducting solid state with an ion transport activation energy below 10kJ/mol at room temperature and no phase transitions from -40C to 80C. That is the holy grail of SS batteries.
- rawgabbit 2mo agoAre anyone building the battery you described?
- jdiff 2mo agoNo. The holy grail goes undiscovered for now.
- j45 2mo agoSeems to be some progress on learning more about it: https://news.mit.edu/2026/discovery-helps-explain-why-solid-state-batteries-often-fail-0706 https://news.mit.edu/2026/discovery-helps-explain-why-solid-...
- moffkalast 2mo agoAliens somewhere, presumably.
- Razengan 2mo agoIsn't their tech powered by portable black holes?
- moffkalast 2mo agoThe regulatory approval for those is just too expensive in practice. I mean you blow up one star due to cost cutting and nobody trusts the tech ever again...
- laxisOp 2mo agoWe need way more research on batteries. People cant ingine what is possible if we make battery 10x energy dense.
- 47635274172635 2mo ago[dead]
- himata4113 2mo agoI don't think 10x density is possible without getting into nuclear, at least not with the chemistries we know of today, everything at a certain point becomes an explosive. Speaking of nuclear, getting tons of the material that powers mars rovers and putting them in every home would generate enough power for decades... At the cost of being able to build a nuclear bomb in a garage.
- Aboutplants 2mo agoThe next revolution will be small scale generation. Fuel cells, extremely efficient cheap solar, even smaller modular reactors, etc. I live in western Pennsylvania and have both natural gas and electric service, a roof and 1/3 acre of land to utilize. I would love to get rid of at least one of my utility bills and I’m becoming more interested in decoupling from the electric grid than natural gas service. I dream of a future where competition comes to monopoly utilities by way of direct competition with each other as there is a not so far off future where I can utilize solar, batteries and a natural gas fuel cell to cut ties with my Electric Utility. If that kind of competition can exist then the game is on for those utilities to start fighting for customers.
- bluGill 2mo agoWith modern heat pumps and induction stoves getting off of natural gas is fairly easy for most people and saves money in the long run. Meanwhile the grid is switching to renewables so getting off gas is your best investment. You can get of electric too, but on your 1/3rd acre that probably means significant lifestyle compromises - I will be impressed if you are willing to live with them.
- wolfi1 2mo agofun fact: there is already a Sodium-battery with a solid electrolyte - but the operating temperature is above 300^C [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium%E2%80%93sulfur_battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium%E2%80%93sulfur_battery
- PunchyHamster 2mo ago...yeah but everything else is liquid...
- wolfi1 2mo agono dendrites ;)
- ck2 2mo agoare dendrites why so many people are now burning down their apartment/complex charging their scooters is LiFePo4 immune to dendrite shorts? Or do they happen just don't burn?
- reportingsjr 2mo agoThere are a number of reasons why lithium batteries may catastrophically fail and catch fire. Dendrite shorts is one, another reason is poor alignment of the layers during assembly, allowing for eventual shifting of layers leading to internal shorting. Another is conductive or sharp debris getting into the battery during manufacturing, and after a while the anode/cathode separator getting pierced by the debris. Lots of reasons!
- hwillis 2mo agodendrites are not really a significant problem in popular batteries. It's associated with lithium metal, vs lithium in normal batteries is in the form of salts. Solid state lets you use metal, which is much more energy dense since you don't need the salts. The most common lithium battery failure mode is that you have a hole in the plastic separator between the +/- sheets inside the battery, which shorts and causes a hotspot that eventually starts a fire. Dendrites cause the short by growing across the gap. In normal batteries it is caused by a manufacturing defect. The outcome is pretty similar.
- tancop 2mo ago[dead]
- thelastgallon 2mo agoAren't sodium batteries close to production and a lot cheaper and safer? Ambri was working on large scale batteries which seemed like a pretty good idea (looks like they ran out of money): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambri_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambri_Inc.
- margalabargala 2mo agoCheaper yes. Non-aqueous sodium ion batteries (which are most of them) are more dangerous than LiFePO4 though.
- vitaminCPP 2mo agoIn what way, if you don't mind me asking?
- margalabargala 2mo agoIn the way that they are more likely to catch fire or explode or undergo thermal runaway. https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aenm.202505016 https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aenm.20... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2095495624002766 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S20954...
- GlibMonkeyDeath 2mo agoDepends on the application - each battery technology has a trade-off between energy density, cost, lifetime, safety, scalability, etc. Sodium may have a place in grid storage, although iron-air is being deployed today and is even cheaper and safer (but poor energy density, which doesn't matter much for grid storage - https://formenergy.com/technology/battery-technology/ https://formenergy.com/technology/battery-technology/)
- jillesvangurp 2mo agoSodium ion batteries are already being mass produced in China. CATL actually just started producing their second generation sodium ion batteries. In the US, Peak energy is doing storage solutions based on sodium ion. Anyway, you are comparing apples and oranges. While solid state sodium ion might become a thing at some point, it so far isn't. The lithium based solid state batteries currently being readied by several battery companies for mass production around 2028 or so tend to have up to 500-600 wh/kg densities. Sodium ion batteries are currently at or below 175 wh/kg typically. LFP is a bit better, and some high end NMC batteries might do 250ish wh/kg. That would be just the first generation solid state batteries. Densities might improve after that. The theoretical limit is a lot denser than that and there is a lot of money going into researching ways to do better than that. Of course energy density is just one thing you might optimize for. Other properties you might look at are operating temperatures, amount of charge cycles the battery can handle before it degrades below 85% of its original capacity, the speed at which it can cycle, fire safety, cost, etc. Mostly sodium ion scores very well on all of this except density. High energy density usually comes at a price. Both in dollars and in compromises with these other things. Think lower lifetime, more constrained temperature ranges, etc. Worth it if weight and volume are really constrained. Like in anything that flies.
- GlibMonkeyDeath 2mo agoThe article gives the technical reasons that answer the headline question (e.g. potential for better energy density) I am surprised they didn't point out the literal "killer app" - military drones. Energy density is king for any airborne power source. And dendrite growth during charge/discharge cycling isn't as big a deal for that application (how many times would you need to charge a disposable weapon?)
- mekdoonggi 2mo agoIf the thing is going to blow up anyway, does it need to be light? Wouldn't you rather have more cheaper drones?
- zamadatix 2mo agoLess weight (all else being equal) is the same thing as more battery for drones. I.e. better range, payload mass, and/or flight time. You probably want both cheap and poor performing as well as expensive and high performing available.
- jgilias 2mo agoIn current battle conditions isn’t the range primarily determined by the size of the fiber optic spool attached to the drone than battery capacity?
- emptyfile 2mo ago[dead]
- zamadatix 2mo agoDepends on the battle but yes. Even then the range is usually at least 10 km and starts to be limited by the size of the spool you're going to carry on the drone (though dealing with general cable issues over the distance is one of the reasons this type can't be used for everything).
- 2mo ago
- deckar01 2mo agoThe Two Bit Da Vinci YouTube channel has a good video on solid state battery fundamentals and a deep dive into a battery company (ProLogium) that has demonstrated manufacturing at scale. https://youtu.be/xQFVIs4leig?si=iOOt5gg_2MJAIoFR https://youtu.be/xQFVIs4leig?si=iOOt5gg_2MJAIoFR
- thelastgallon 2mo agoBYDs battery stress testing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPTgg3joL5E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPTgg3joL5E
- deckar01 2mo agoThose use liquid electrolyte cells and the video is more promo than rigorous testing.
- MarkusQ 2mo ago> because the liquid electrolyte currently used in batteries is flammable, replacing it with a solid could make batteries safer and less susceptible to fire. The problem is primarily that batteries are storing a lot of energy, which can be released when things go wrong. The electrolytes (technically, the solvents) typically don't ignite under 750°F or so, which makes them less flammable than a lot of other common materials, and far less of a concern than, say, the lithium metal.
- m463 2mo agoI wonder about the youtube videos of someone driving a screwdriver through a battery pack. Is that the electrical discharge, then the lithium going off, then the electrolytes?
- fhn 2mo agoyou ever short a car battery? That much electricity running through metal will create a lot of heat which then ignites the lithium. Watch a video on thermite and you'll get the idea.
- usrusr 2mo agoIsn't the key difference that flammable solids have a limited reaction surface when they burn, whereas flammable liquids can be wildly unpredictable?
- londons_explore 2mo agoThis isn't true for most lithium ion chemistries. The liquid electrolyte is the thing that releases most energy when the battery burns, more than the anode and cathode. Some also have a very low self ignition temperature.
- rhdunn 2mo agoIIUC, the main problem with the current Li batteries is that the two plates can over time grow material that will 1) degrade performance; and 2) make it more likely to short circuit and catch fire. Similarly with electric car batteries after accidents where the battery is damaged, short circuits, and then catches fire. So the main risk here would be the likelyhood of short circuiting under different failure scenarios.
- qwery 2mo agoIf you know a bit about electronics, you might be a bit surprised by the term 'solid-state battery'. It's a poor analogue to the more common usage of solid-state with semiconductors, integrated circuits, etc. -- a "solid-state" cell is still a chemical cell. It's not a paradigm shift on the level of, say, replacing a relay with a MOSFET.
- jhallenworld 2mo agoI think "solid-state" is a marketing term which means you need to use Fermi-Dirac statistics to model your device, vs. vacuum tubes where you can use Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics. I think you can use Maxwell-Boltzmann at least for the ions in the electrolyte.. but maybe have to use for Fermi-Dirac for all conductors in a solid-state battery.
- inigyou 2mo agoI thought it meant your database was singly responsible, open for extension but closed for modification, Liskov substitutable, interface segregated, and dependency inverted.
- jojobas 2mo agoNon-solid-state batteries have liquid/gel electrolyte.
- qwery 2mo agoWood is a solid-state battery. The term has obviously been selected because of how revolutionary solid-state electronic devices were/are. And it's not like they selected it after a revolutionary energy storage device was introduced. Solid-state batteries (cells) are an incremental improvement, at best. And because this is the web: I am not being negative about the technology. I happen to be of the radical opinion that incremental improvements are good, actually.
- jojobas 2mo agoThe word "battery" is a stand-in for electrochemical cell, which wood obviously isn't. Quite some advantages are expected from batteries that don't involve liquids or gels, whether incremental or not.
- lenerdenator 2mo agoManufacturing the batteries would probably benefit from solid state. The Panasonic battery plant in the exurbs of Kansas City, MO has had two evacuations this year from thermal issues related to lithium-ion battery production, including one yesterday morning. [0] [1] [0]https://www.kmbc.com/article/lithium-ion-batteries-catch-fire-at-panasonics-de-soto-plant/73293745 https://www.kmbc.com/article/lithium-ion-batteries-catch-fir... [1]https://www.kmbc.com/article/panasonic-plant-de-soto-evacuation-thermal-event/71219725 https://www.kmbc.com/article/panasonic-plant-de-soto-evacuat...
- jhawk28 2mo agoI'm not trying to build a solid-state battery...
- hn6l4bg2fw 2mo ago[dead]
- alok-g 2mo agoCan someone please explain why electrons also cannot go directly through the electrolyte just like Lithium ions? Footnote 1 skips explaining this. I tried asking ChatGPT, but it is not getting to a complete answer. It says things that just pushes the question into another form.
- Shitty-kitty 2mo agoAn ion is a atom that has lost electrons and thus it has a + charge. The electrons are the - charge. The electrolyte allows + to flow but not -
- alok-g 2mo agoCool! That seems to fit as the voltage build-up (assuming no current taken from the battery) is not reversed by the negative ions flowing backwards. I still have the question though. How does the electrolyte do that? :-)
- Tuna-Fish 2mo agoElectrons require significant voltage to move through free space or insulators. They generally move between places by hopping between atoms with free outer electrons. Electrolytes are designed to not have any.
- alok-g 2mo agoThat sounds better. Still leads to some questions that I am missing the answers to: A Lithium ion has the same charge in magnitude as an elecron. Electron is much lighter. Why and how is it that Li+ ions are able to, but electrons can't? A same number of ions and electrons should be generating on the electrodes. >> Generally move When there no free electron space in atoms, instead of electrons being stuck, should still move the electrolyte as free particles just like ions. Seems like they can't in this case. Why not?
- brcmthrowaway 2mo agoWas Dendrite shorts the reason for Samsung failure?
- jocelyner 2mo ago[dead]
- 21asdffdsa12 2mo agoI find the fact that the military here is setup orthogonal to the civilian sector fascinating- for the military- a unified energy carrier - that can be everything, battery, fuel, explosives is the golden grail. Bonuspoints if you can squeeze that liquid through a fuel cell. So, Methanol + doseable hydrogenperoxide or something similar it is. If it can drive your drone, power its onboard compute and fire a gun or convert into explosives at the end of the journey, thats pure victory. Bonuspoints again, if you can standardize your whole setup into machine assembleable legobricks, creating changeable drones on demand, that can iterate in hours through, where normal military industrial complexes take months, years, generations. Every drone, every rocket just a stack of coke cans, foil-wrapped, going for a walk, a fly.
- inigyou 2mo agoYouTuber "NightHawkInLight" just made a flow battery from common materials. Why would I want a solid state battery when I could have a battery whose capacity expands just by duct taping plastic water barrels to it?
- j16sdiz 2mo agoWhat's the energy density for that? Something that works doesn't mean something is desirable
- floatrock 2mo agoIs energy density required for all applications? Something that's not desirable for say a car doesn't mean something isn't good enough for say non-mobile applications.
- homeonthemtn 2mo agoWell, yes actually. If you're talking any kind of batteries above Duracell level, then it's important to understand how much power can be stored in a given "unit"
- floatrock 2mo agoOf course you need to know the power per unit to some degree, but when you're building warehouse-sized stationary storage arrays, land is cheap and LCOS is more important than energy density. That's a very different tradeoff calculation than if you're building a car.
- conorcleary 2mo agoHold on, buying Lemon calls.
- wongarsu 2mo agoFor storage at the level of a home or a grid-level battery, absolutely. Li-Ion is dominating because of the amount of inertia and economies of scale it has. But if we assumed equal amounts of R&D and investment you'd expect a future of solid state batteries for mobile applications and flow batteries for stationary applications
- VaderAi 2mo agoIt seems the solid state battery is the long awaited answer to ev development. Where we will see range of 1000km and super fast charging and reasonable battery replacement costs. Currently in the market with battery failures it is cheaper to buy another ev rather than replace the battery.
- mrmckizzle 2mo agoDefinitely being unreasonable, but that's one of the reasons I don't have an electric vehicle yet. I'm paranoid of that thing catching fire in my garage. Which is ironic since one of my random electronic devices with li-batteries probably could catch fire regardless in my house. At least with a gasoline it seems we are better equipped to deal witg such fires. Overall my end goal is to have a seperate storage for the e-vehicle.. Plus it be easier to slap some solar on that structure.
- rootusrootus 2mo agoI understand the paranoia, but it is definitely emotional reasoning overriding facts. Gasoline powered vehicles are vastly more likely to go up in flames. Even when you adjust for age and mileage. Even if you only look at cars that spontaneously ignited when parked. The wiring in a gas car is exposed to a tremendous amount of heat and vibration. EVs spontaneously igniting are newsworthy partly because politics, but also because it is novel. Gas vehicles burn daily, the odds are pretty good that a couple are burning somewhere right now.
- pfdietz 2mo agoThis article seems to confuse lithium-ion and lithium-metal batteries. Lithium-ion batteries intercalcate lithium ions into pre-existing electrodes and that doesn't form dendrites. Dendrites are a phenomenon of lithium-metal batteries, where lithium ions tend to be reduced to metal at the tips of the dendrites. You can get lithium metal forming on lithium-ion electrodes, which could go on to form dendrites, but the failure there is the metal formation, not the dendrite formation.
- burnt-resistor 2mo agoChina-certified solid state, CATL sodium, and ProLogium are manufacturable batteries that don't violently deflagrate under puncture, cutting, or high temperature. When these reach markets in significant quantities, most Li ion (NMC, LiPo, and LFP) with liquid electrolyte or plastic separators should be banned for most purposes, especially vehicles and occupied areas. These are whale oil lamps that pose a silent, ubiquitous danger to life and property.
- NigelBatteryDes 2mo agoSolid state batteries are offering a lot of tagline benefits: safety, high energy density, lightweight...amongst many other claims. However, there are a number of things you need to be aware of: 1. Safety - cannot be completely safe 2. Pressure - some solid state cells need pressure applied and this can be quite high and impact claimed density 3. Liquids - some cells call their technology Semi-Solid, this is not solid state, let's not be caught out There are 7 more items to consider: https://www.batterydesign.net/10-things-about-ssbs-that-you-are-often-not-told/ https://www.batterydesign.net/10-things-about-ssbs-that-you-...