4 ms·

Silicon, the new lithium?

23 points by chanux 17y ago

etherealG 17y ago
any 3rd party verification available on this?
iamwil 17y ago
I hate it when the article never links to the original paper. http://materials.technion.ac.il/EinEli/Publications/publications.html# http://materials.technion.ac.il/EinEli/Publications/publicat... Click on 2009, and then click the pdf link to request by email.
scythe 17y ago
As someone who's been paying attention to various high-performance battery technologies, I'm a little disappointed that they didn't link to the original paper (if anyone could find it, that'd be nice). However, the author is a little eager to jump to conclusions, some of which are wrong: first, a non-rechargeable battery that "uses air as a cathode" is called a fuel cell, and it's not a particularly new design. In fact, silicon fuel cells have been around since at least 2007 [1]. Also, Bolivia does not have half of the world's supply of lithium; they currently have the cheapest reserves, but as lithium represents about 2% of the cost of producing a lithium-ion battery, there are many more potential reserves available [2]. It's also worth pointing out that we've had non-rechargeable batteries that exceed lithium's energy store potential for quite a while, in the form of lithium-thionyl chloride [3]. Really, though, what seems more interesting to me are the nanostructured silicon-anode lithium-ion batteries, which have been demonstrated multiple times now, have capacities several times those of lithium, and are rechargeable [4] [5] [6]. [1] http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-983920.html http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-983920.html [2] http://gas2.org/2008/10/13/lithium-counterpoint-no-shortage-for-electric-cars/ http://gas2.org/2008/10/13/lithium-counterpoint-no-shortage-... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_battery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_battery [4] http://gas2.org/2008/11/25/silicon-could-give-lithium-ion-batteries-10x-more-capacity/ http://gas2.org/2008/11/25/silicon-could-give-lithium-ion-ba... [5] http://aiche.confex.com/aiche/2009/webprogrampreliminary/Paper159441.html http://aiche.confex.com/aiche/2009/webprogrampreliminary/Pap... [6] http://news.stanford.edu/news/2008/january9/nanowire-010908.html http://news.stanford.edu/news/2008/january9/nanowire-010908....
- davi 17y ago
  Nice example of interesting but vapid post leading to dense HN comment. Thanks.

23 points by chanux 17y ago

any 3rd party verification available on this?

I hate it when the article never links to the original paper. http://materials.technion.ac.il/EinEli/Publications/publications.html# http://materials.technion.ac.il/EinEli/Publications/publicat... Click on 2009, and then click the pdf link to request by email.

scythe 17y ago

As someone who's been paying attention to various high-performance battery technologies, I'm a little disappointed that they didn't link to the original paper (if anyone could find it, that'd be nice). However, the author is a little eager to jump to conclusions, some of which are wrong: first, a non-rechargeable battery that "uses air as a cathode" is called a fuel cell, and it's not a particularly new design. In fact, silicon fuel cells have been around since at least 2007 [1]. Also, Bolivia does not have half of the world's supply of lithium; they currently have the cheapest reserves, but as lithium represents about 2% of the cost of producing a lithium-ion battery, there are many more potential reserves available [2]. It's also worth pointing out that we've had non-rechargeable batteries that exceed lithium's energy store potential for quite a while, in the form of lithium-thionyl chloride [3]. Really, though, what seems more interesting to me are the nanostructured silicon-anode lithium-ion batteries, which have been demonstrated multiple times now, have capacities several times those of lithium, and are rechargeable [4] [5] [6]. [1] http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-983920.html http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-983920.html [2] http://gas2.org/2008/10/13/lithium-counterpoint-no-shortage-for-electric-cars/ http://gas2.org/2008/10/13/lithium-counterpoint-no-shortage-... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_battery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_battery [4] http://gas2.org/2008/11/25/silicon-could-give-lithium-ion-batteries-10x-more-capacity/ http://gas2.org/2008/11/25/silicon-could-give-lithium-ion-ba... [5] http://aiche.confex.com/aiche/2009/webprogrampreliminary/Paper159441.html http://aiche.confex.com/aiche/2009/webprogrampreliminary/Pap... [6] http://news.stanford.edu/news/2008/january9/nanowire-010908.html http://news.stanford.edu/news/2008/january9/nanowire-010908....

davi 17y ago
Nice example of interesting but vapid post leading to dense HN comment. Thanks.