4 ms·

Chemists one step closer to new generation of electric car battery

25 points by lelf 12y ago

mrfusion 12y ago
Could the gigafactory be repurposed to produce these batteries? Are they expecting to handle technology shifts like these every few years?
- jimmcslim 12y ago
  The unfortunate reality might be that we have reached the limits of what chemistry can physically achieve with battery technology and there are no more significant shifts to be dealt with...
Egregore 12y ago
Quote from the article: "Very few researchers study or even teach sulphur chemistry anymore," said Nazar. "It's ironic we had to look so far back in the literature to understand something that may so radically change our future." I wonder if is there a structured database of scientific material to address such research?
- vamin 12y ago
  I'm not aware of any structured databases of published research articles, but this project (a database of computed properties for materials) has generated some interesting insights into batteries and other technologies: https://www.materialsproject.org/ https://www.materialsproject.org/ For example, check out the papers on phophates as Li-ion cathodes in About->Publications.
Animats 12y ago
An ultra-thin nanomaterial is at the heart of a major breakthrough by Waterloo scientists who are in a global race to invent a cheaper, lighter and more powerful rechargeable battery for electric vehicles. Another minor advance in surface chemistry, heavily overpromoted. This seems to be standard operating procedure in "nanotechnology". At least the headline says "one step closer", not "invented new battery". They made a similar announcement back in 2009: (http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v8/n6/full/nmat2460.html http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v8/n6/full/nmat2460.html). Here's what they said six years ago: The Li–S battery has been under intense scrutiny for over two decades, as it offers the possibility of high gravimetric capacities and theoretical energy densities ranging up to a factor of five beyond conventional Li-ion systems. Herein, we report the feasibility to approach such capacities by creating highly ordered interwoven composites. .., Reversible capacities up to 1,320 mA h g-1 are attained. The assembly process is simple and broadly applicable,... That battery turned out to last for only two or three charge cycles. Now they claim to have fixed that. There are at least eight other LiS battery research projects (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium%E2%80%93sulfur_battery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium%E2%80%93sulfur_battery) and at least three startups (oxisenergy.com/) (sionpower.com/) (polyplus.com). Sion Power has shipped some usable batteries, which were used in the Zephyr, a solar/battery powered all electric UAV that stayed up for 14 days.
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  Excellent collection of references. As with most things batteries are more than just chemistry. I will be interesting to see if they can mass produce cathodes using this technique.
rdtsc 12y ago
It seems battery technology field has a lot of "great breakthrough just around the corner" type announcements. Seemingly more so than other fields. Wonder if "improved" battery idea is much easier to sell to investors who maybe not as tech savvy, but nevertheless everyone thinks they can understand the idea of "better battery" rather than say special coating for turbine blades.
ars 12y ago
One nice thing about sulfur is we have a tremendous amount of it left over from cleaning it out of oil. There's so much of it just sitting in huge piles it's effectively free.
breckinloggins 12y ago
I want to believe... Does anyone know if there's a site that tracks all the "major breakthroughs" from the various sciences and treats them as a thing with a lifecycle, so you can go back and check whether "fantastic result X" has any of the following? - followup papers / research - additional grant money - commercialization steps achieved That's what would be really great: treat each of these as the start to a potentially longer story.
breckinloggins 12y ago
"It's ironic we had to look so far back in the literature to understand something that may so radically change our future." No, it's expected. Fundamental science rarely "ages", it just might be a while before it can find applications. I hope for a future where scientific discoveries don't fade, they are just input into some distributed semantic database as a "fact". Combined with researchers who are taught to use these tools and to think in a multi-disciplinary fashion, this could really accelerate the pace of discovery and invention.

25 points by lelf 12y ago

Could the gigafactory be repurposed to produce these batteries? Are they expecting to handle technology shifts like these every few years?

jimmcslim 12y ago
The unfortunate reality might be that we have reached the limits of what chemistry can physically achieve with battery technology and there are no more significant shifts to be dealt with...

Egregore 12y ago

Quote from the article: "Very few researchers study or even teach sulphur chemistry anymore," said Nazar. "It's ironic we had to look so far back in the literature to understand something that may so radically change our future." I wonder if is there a structured database of scientific material to address such research?

vamin 12y ago
I'm not aware of any structured databases of published research articles, but this project (a database of computed properties for materials) has generated some interesting insights into batteries and other technologies: https://www.materialsproject.org/ https://www.materialsproject.org/ For example, check out the papers on phophates as Li-ion cathodes in About->Publications.

Animats 12y ago

An ultra-thin nanomaterial is at the heart of a major breakthrough by Waterloo scientists who are in a global race to invent a cheaper, lighter and more powerful rechargeable battery for electric vehicles. Another minor advance in surface chemistry, heavily overpromoted. This seems to be standard operating procedure in "nanotechnology". At least the headline says "one step closer", not "invented new battery". They made a similar announcement back in 2009: (http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v8/n6/full/nmat2460.html http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v8/n6/full/nmat2460.html). Here's what they said six years ago: The Li–S battery has been under intense scrutiny for over two decades, as it offers the possibility of high gravimetric capacities and theoretical energy densities ranging up to a factor of five beyond conventional Li-ion systems. Herein, we report the feasibility to approach such capacities by creating highly ordered interwoven composites. .., Reversible capacities up to 1,320 mA h g-1 are attained. The assembly process is simple and broadly applicable,... That battery turned out to last for only two or three charge cycles. Now they claim to have fixed that. There are at least eight other LiS battery research projects (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium%E2%80%93sulfur_battery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium%E2%80%93sulfur_battery) and at least three startups (oxisenergy.com/) (sionpower.com/) (polyplus.com). Sion Power has shipped some usable batteries, which were used in the Zephyr, a solar/battery powered all electric UAV that stayed up for 14 days.

ChuckMcM 12y ago
Excellent collection of references. As with most things batteries are more than just chemistry. I will be interesting to see if they can mass produce cathodes using this technique.

rdtsc 12y ago

It seems battery technology field has a lot of "great breakthrough just around the corner" type announcements. Seemingly more so than other fields. Wonder if "improved" battery idea is much easier to sell to investors who maybe not as tech savvy, but nevertheless everyone thinks they can understand the idea of "better battery" rather than say special coating for turbine blades.

ars 12y ago

One nice thing about sulfur is we have a tremendous amount of it left over from cleaning it out of oil. There's so much of it just sitting in huge piles it's effectively free.

breckinloggins 12y ago

I want to believe... Does anyone know if there's a site that tracks all the "major breakthroughs" from the various sciences and treats them as a thing with a lifecycle, so you can go back and check whether "fantastic result X" has any of the following? - followup papers / research - additional grant money - commercialization steps achieved That's what would be really great: treat each of these as the start to a potentially longer story.

breckinloggins 12y ago

"It's ironic we had to look so far back in the literature to understand something that may so radically change our future." No, it's expected. Fundamental science rarely "ages", it just might be a while before it can find applications. I hope for a future where scientific discoveries don't fade, they are just input into some distributed semantic database as a "fact". Combined with researchers who are taught to use these tools and to think in a multi-disciplinary fashion, this could really accelerate the pace of discovery and invention.