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New lithium-ion battery design – 2,000x more powerful, recharges 1,000x faster
- lutusp 14y agoThis is a classic case of a submission title taking liberties with the meaning of the article it links. This submission's title: "New lithium-ion battery 2000 times more powerful, recharges 1000 times faster" The actual title: "New lithium-ion battery design that’s 2,000 times more powerful, recharges 1,000 times faster" The missing word is "design", a word that is crucial to the meaning of the article. The article discusses a design for a battery, not a battery. How important is that? Here's the last sentence in the linked article: "For this to occur, though, the University of Illinois will first have to prove that their technology scales to larger battery sizes, and that the production process isn’t prohibitively expensive for commercial production." It's a design, not a battery. The solution to this problem, as I have pointed out many times before, is to copy the article's title, do not invent your own.
- jack-r-abbit 14y ago> So far, the researchers have used this tech to create a button-sized microbattery, and you can see in the graph below how well their battery compares to a conventional Sony CR1620 button cell. That sounds like a battery to me. The new design has actually been built and tested. The quote you pulled out refers to scaling it up to things like lasers and F1 cars. A button-sized battery sounds fine for a lot of electronics today. Just not an F1 car.
- criley 14y agoIt sounds like they've developed a prototype, which is further than a design but also not a production model.
- jack-r-abbit 14y agoAgreed. But it is a functional battery more than it is "only a design"
- lutusp 14y agoFair enough. Is a prototype flying car a design or a product? Can I get one -- not the design, the product?
- jack-r-abbit 14y agoNeither... it is a prototype. Somewhere between just a design and a product is a wide variety of other states. A single, physical item that actually functions as designed may not be a product yet (or ever) but it is leaps and bounds beyond "just a design." If "prototype" and "design" mean the same thing then a lot of people get that wrong everyday.
- Someone 14y agoBuilding one in the lab likely does not give you the ability to build a million of them at a decent price in a factory. Yield probably is low, and the current process will likely be way too labour intensive.
- jack-r-abbit 14y agoTrue. But lutusp was shitting all over the submitter for dropping the almighty "design" word from the title and then claimed this is not an article about a battery but only about a design for one. That claim is wrong. It is more than a design... it is an actual battery. Maybe there is only one unit that exists. But that is still one more than a design. And if the tech proves sound but too labor intensive, your next thing to tackle is to make it easier to build. Isn't that how bleeding-edge innovation works?
- alecdibble 14y agoBleeding edge innovation usually occurs when researchers and engineers make progress using known or easily-modifiable processes. Most "breakthroughs" are dead-ends because process or scaling weren't considered in the initial research. True technological innovation needs not just engineering feasibility but also economic feasibility. I'm not trying to say that the research that "dead ends" is pointless. Progress is progress. All I am trying to say is that it doesn't mean economic viability is right around the corner. Often, researchers are well aware of scaling or manufacturing hurdles when they embark on the experiments. For the sake of academic careers and exposure, the research will get hyped regardless of the viability of implementing the research.
- lutusp 14y ago> But lutusp was shitting all over the submitter for dropping the almighty "design" word from the title and then claimed this is not an article about a battery but only about a design for one. Yes, but guess what? That's true -- it's not a marketable product, it's a laboratory curiosity. That difference mustn't be dismissed. There are any number of research developments that never become products for reasons other than their theoretical properties. > Isn't that how bleeding-edge innovation works? Not exactly. If if were, a solar panel that converted a higher percentage of the sun's energy into electricity would beat a panel that produced more power per dollar. But in reality, it's the other way around.
- lutusp 14y ago> That sounds like a battery to me. Not when the public thinks a battery is something you can buy for a reasonable price. This reminds me of the solar panel business, where the driving market issue is not cell efficiency, it's cell cost per watt. A panel that produces more watts per dollar will usually beat a panel that's more efficient at capturing the sun's energy.
- jacquesm 14y agoIf HN would not force you to reduce titles to < 80 characters then likely the original title would have been used. The original is 95 characters. "design that’s " and two comma's in the numbers get dropped and we're down to exactly 78. Dropping words from a title in order to fit the 80 char limit is a bit of an art if you don't want to change the meaning, and making a new title is frowned upon because then you care not using the original title. Effectively you can't post an article with a title > 80 characters and not break the rules.
- jack-r-abbit 14y ago"New lithium-ion battery design 2000x more powerful, recharges 1000x faster" fits with out altering the meaning at all.
- jacquesm 14y agoI didn't say you couldn't do better, I just pointed out the likely source of the problem. GGP says > copy the article's title, do not invent your own. Unfortunately you can't always do that. Dropping words is one technique to shorten the title, rewriting it is another, both techniques are employed.
- jack-r-abbit 14y agoWe agree on the topic. Indeed it is tricky to strike the right balance when trying to edit something down to fit and keep the meaning. I probably do this dozens of times a week trying to get the full intent of a thought down to 140 chars. :)
- caw 14y agoCould always opt for the scientific notation. "New Li+ battery design - 2,000x more powerful, recharges 1,000x faster" Now you just have to know that Li is Lithium and the + is for an ion.
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- derpenxyne 14y agoFor some part I agree with you but it's difficult to make the cut down to 80 characters for titles.
- mark-r 14y agoThe original title wasn't the greatest either, probably engineered to be link-bait. Nobody cares how fast you can get power out of the thing, they care how much total energy it holds - and the article is clear that it is comparable or slightly worse than current technology.
- VLM 14y agoLow internal resistance can make life very exciting in case of short circuit. Maybe a decade ago there was a fad of sticking a bare, unbiased LED across a button cell and relying on the internal resistance of the cell to current limit the LED. Then you superglue a magnet on it and toss it and you've got a LED throwie. If you tried that with a super low internal resistance battery like this, the effect would be vaguely similar to sticking the LED across a power outlet (boom).
- idupree 14y agoTo be clear: high power density, but similar energy density to current batteries.
- fryguy 14y agoAt some level, it doesn't make too much sense to go that much higher in the power (which I'm assuming is the same as discharge rate, since voltage is fixed). Current lipoly batteries are rated at 30C (Amps per watt*hour). Essentially this means that the battery can be fully discharged in a minimum of two minutes. It doesn't seem like there are that many applications that require higher power output.
- baq 14y agocars, for one, especially if high power output correlates with high power input for charging.
- ajross 14y agoExactly. It's very rare to find an application where a rapid discharge matters (battery powered guided missile maybe? A drone launcher that boosts a device to altitude and then comes back down on a parachute?), but a rapid charge speed is almost universally desired. At the numbers being quoted here, for example, it would become faster to simply charge your phone than swap the fiddly battery.
- bencpeters 14y agoAgreed. I would argue that many (most?) higher power applications would be better served by ultracapacitors anyway...
- ironchief 14y agoDesign != Build != Shipping I love this research but have seen similar articles for the past decade. At scale production is hard, just ask A123.
- lutusp 14y agoThe ideal: Design, build, sell. The real: Sell, build, design. :)
- ChuckMcM 14y agoTo be clear, this is the ExtremeTech blog, all of their commentary leans heavily toward wishful thinking. For context a number of surface area improvements in Lithium-Ion anodes have failed at scale due to the creation of lithium dendrites (metal 'wires' that grow during recharge) which have either rendered large sections of the anode worthless and reduced the capacity of the battery, or created rapid exothermic reactions (aka fires) in the battery.
- g8oz 14y agoIts on the BBC New site as well which is actually much less clear in explaining that this research is applicable to the supercapacitor space as opposed to 'normal' Li* batteries.
- icegreentea 14y agoFor people having trouble interpreting the graph, the legend from the actual paper says: "The energy and power density of our microbattery cells (A–H) at low to high C rates, along with previous microbattery cells having 3D electrodes (MB1 through MB3). The plot also includes the performance range of conventional power technologies and commercial batteries from A123 (high power) and Sony (high energy)." Where C rates stand for charge rates, with 1C being able to charge the full capacity of the battery in 1 hour. The key take away for the new design's performance isn't the one quoted in the title (of the submission or the article), but rather "Compared with conventional supercapacitors, our microbattery delivers 10 × the power of a supercapacitor at comparable energy density, delivers 10 × the energy of a supercapacitor at comparable power density or has 10 × smaller volume than a supercapacitor at comparable performance". Just by glancing at the graph, you can see that the design is orders of magnitudes less energy dense than today's lithium-ion batteries. This advancement will make high-power applications more feasible, but will probably not do very much to increase your phone/laptop's battery life.
- gabipurcaru 14y agoElectric cars?
- Retric 14y agoWeight, Energy density. and cost are what's most important for general Electric car energy storage. So if this cost's more or weights significantly more it's next to useless for that. However, they might have some use as part of a more efficient regenerative breaking system. PS: As to faster charging, issues are going to Limit that. A 99% efficient battery charging 100x as fast as Li-Ion is going to dump a lot of heat vary quickly. Duping heat is not really an issue for small battery's but scale this up into the 50+kwh range for an electric car or even just a cellphone battery and you will have significant issues.
- userulluipeste 14y agoAbout charging speed, you're invoking another problem, that of (over)heating. That however, deserves a separate context of its own to be addressed in. I think it's safe to assume that a lot of efficiency can be safely salvaged from that 100x improvement.
- gambiting 14y ago"2000 times more powerful, recharges 1000 times faster " - so it will still take twice as long to charge it fully then?
- gvb 14y agoNo, the energy density is not all that unusual. Assuming the battery is 2000AH and is 100% efficient, the "2000 times more powerful" means you can (theoretically!) discharge it 2000 times faster than the benchmark battery (e.g. 2000A over 1 hour vs. 1A over 2000 hours). The 1000x recharge rate means you can put the energy back in 1000x faster than the benchmark battery (e.g. 1000A x 2 hours vs. 1A x 2000 hours). Due to the energy density being comparable, I would expect the actual size of a 2000AH New Improved[tm] lithium-ion battery would be comparable to the size of a traditional 2000AH "benchmark" battery. Disclaimer: All the numbers made up out of thin air using values that were easy to do in my head.
- ck2 14y agoWhere's that xkcd chart when I need it for every announcement like this... Ah here we go: http://xkcd.com/678/ http://xkcd.com/678/
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- Florin_Andrei 14y agoThe title is completely misleading.
- wmf 14y agoYeah, it's literally correct if you understand the difference between power and energy but most people don't.
- mbell 14y agoIncluding the author considering he is claiming that this would leed to smaller cell phone batteries...
- legierski 14y agoI was hoping for 2000x battery life for my laptop...
- dbecker 14y agoThe most exciting application they can imagine for a super-battery is smaller cell phone batteries? That doesn't seem very forward thinking.
- VLM 14y agoExcellent surface area to volume ratio for cooling. If you want to shove tens of amps into something tiny its gotta be nearly perfectly efficient and/or excellent cooling and/or be tiny to get a great surface area/volume ratio. I bet this would rock for bluetooth earpieces. Also people expect some apps like cars to last for 15 years, but if you're "nervous" about long life, your stereotypical disposable cellphone is a great app.
- umarrana 14y agoAnd it will be available in 10 years.
- transfire 14y agoIf a car battery can be made to charge to 50% capacity in about a minute with a total range greater than 60 miles or so, then a very novel solution to charging electric cars becomes possible -- induction coils at stop lights and along highways.
- ajuc 14y agoIn the bigger cities and between them we could just connect electric cars to grid the whole time, and put energy meters in each car. Like trolleys. No need for big batteries inside the car, just supercapacitors for a few minutes worth of driving if there's some problem with the grid and you need to park safely. I wonder if people could buy electric cars like they buy cellphones - you sign a contract with a provider, you pay X USD per month for the car and access to the grid, additionaly you have access to free regular car if you need to drive somehwere the grid doesn't exist yet(but you pay for the fuel by yourself). The problem is infrastructure, I think.
- peg_leg 14y agoOh good, I can play Angry Birds longer.
- yoava 14y agoThe one thing they did not mention was the battery weight and size. The biggest barrier for electric cars and other battery uses is the ratio of energy to weight and size. Today, this ratio enables about 70-100 miles travel for an electric car with a similar weight and size as a gasoline car. will be interesting to follow this initiative.
- Aardwolf 14y agoUh, let's combine this with the other 3 articles claiming a 10x more long lasting battery, and we'll have a 1000x longer lasting, 2000x more powerful, 1000x faster recharging battery. I really love progress, but I've seen too many of these "N times better" articles and no actual consumption products by now. Same with these memristors, MRAM and feRAM, and 1000x faster internet.
- ajuc 14y ago> 1000x faster internet. I don't know about you, but my first internet connection was 56 kbps, now I can easily buy 100 Mbps one (I don't cause 10 Mbps is good enough for me) and it would be much cheaper than what I had to pay 15 years ago for that 56 kbps, even including inflation. Progress is here, we just don't notice (also media and inventors overhype). But in the end the progress is still happening unbeliveably fast. It's decimal order of magnitude every 5 years!
- juskrey 14y agoGreat, my Android will be alive 6 hours longer
- guilloche 14y agoIt discharges/charges much faster, that is all about the new battery. Discharging fast make it more possible to catch fire. Overall, it seems not very useful for smartphones.
- tr4656 14y agoBut nowhere does this article even talk about using this for smartphones or in any form of application.
- panacea 14y ago"In real-world use, this tech will probably be used to equip consumer devices with batteries that are much smaller and lighter — imagine a smartphone with a battery the thickness of a credit card, which can be recharged in a few seconds."
- swinglock 14y agoEven if it doesn't catch on fire, discharging faster isn't what I want for my phones battery.
- DigitalSea 14y agoI wonder if 2,000x more powerful means generates 2,000x more heat and the risk of exploding is increased by 2,000x as well?