Stanford claims Lithium battery breakthrough
Li-ion battery using Si nanowires with order of magnitude improvement in capacity
If practical to fabricate, this would do wonders for laptops and cellphones.
If mass producable, it could be interesting for rechargable mass energy storage and for high power applications, like transport.
The papers claims they reached theoretical capacity of 4.2 Ah/g, which is quite impressive. They'd require ~ 1000 cells in series to get a voltage interesting for high power application, which would still give you an Ah/kg or more, with packaging etc.
That is an order of magnitude improvement over current tech, and gets to interesting power densities if it can be reliably and cheaply mass manufactured.
Paper suggests the manufacturing is straightforward.
IF... we'll find out soon.
Damn, this one could be for real.
Paper is Cui et al Nature Nanotech Dec 2007
h/t kos - very cute, the kossacks immediately diverge into patent conspiracy nonsense in the comment thread...
- Log in to post comments
More like this
Interesting. I wonder how well of a job the nanowires do, and what thier longevity is. I wouldn't be suprised if lifespan isn't very good.
Beyond that, it's just a matter of cost. It would be nice if a good battery technology actually made it into mainstream use.
Any word on the CoRoT press conference that was supposed to start half an hour ago?
I'd only need a 40 kg battery to run an electric car for an hour at a power that matches the peak power of my current car, assuming 50 % efficiency and 1 Ah/kg for 1000 3.7 V cells. Assuming 33 % efficiency for the gasoline engine, a 80 kg battery would be equivalent of a full tank of 45 liters or 35 kg of gasoline. Not bad. Only trouble is that at 100 % charging efficiency at 230 VAC/16 A, it would take 80 hours to recharge fully, so an ordinary 16 A single phase socket just wouldn't do. 3-phase 32 A sockets for overnight recharging are a bit harder to come by.
This is great news! Let's hope it pans out. I have a post about plug in hybrid vehicles and how they could make a big change as far as CO2 etc. Batteries moving up in capacity gets us ever closer!
Dave Briggs :~)
The volumetric change (charge/discharge cycle) of the nanowire is allegedly four times, typical battery tech is in the single digit percent. The tests were for only 20cycles. Some clever engineering, and probably low mass density will presumably be required to overcome this.
Yeah, the batteries have to survive hundreds of charge/recharge cycles to be practical for most applications.
That and mass manufacturing will be what could limit the application of the technology.
But at least it is something plausible that could work, that's a step up already.
Rest, as they say, is Just Engineering
In other news, Penn State claims breakthrough in National Championship volleyball matches.
We have to take our wins over Stanford in whatever arena we can get them.