AAAAAAAAA-size Li-Ion Cells

Jasin Natael writes "Thought Li-Ion batteries were all the same? Think again. Several universities, under a grant from the US Office of Naval Research, are miniaturizing the anodes and cathodes of Li-Ion batteries to nanoscale, hoping to make more efficient, smaller cells that last longer."

Comments

Heat production?

[autopr0n]

I have a nokia 8000 series phone (i forget the exact model, it's not printed anywhere, oddly)

It's a few years, and pretty 'primitive', but when I'm on the phone that thing get's hot. Not unbearably so, although it does almost get uncomfortable to hold up to my ear.

If these add-ons need so much more power then current cell phone batteries, then they would need to put out a lot more heat too. After all, 1 watt of power used equals about 1 watt of heat produced (not counting things like lights, or EM radiation).

IMO those things would be better served by smaller, cpus with more computational power per unit of actual power.

Of course longer battery life would be helpful to :P

Re:Heat production?

[Mononoke]

IMO those things would be better served by smaller, cpus with more computational power per unit of actual power.

It's (typically) not the CPU creating the excess heat; It's the transmitter itself. Handheld cel phone antennae are poorly tuned and tend to reflect power back into the transmitter causing it to heat up.

(Why not properly tune the antenna? The human body de-tunes the phone's antenna/ground plane system differently for different users.)

There's a problem with this approach

[50000BTU_barbecue]

You can't scale things down like this. Rules change as you get smaller. Cells, as in human cells, don't have little batteries with discrete anodes and cathodes floating around. The way cells use energy is fundamentally different from a battery. People will have to shift their point of view away from making 'big things small', and start thinking in different ways. It is possible to miniaturize vacuum tubes, for example, but to get really small circuits there had to be a (sigh.. marketroid speak, but it works well) paradigm shift. I think the same thing will happen with energy storage.

Re:Naming scheme

[GigsVT]

I used to know this, but the naming convention came around sometime in the early 50s or late 40s. There were A, B, C, D dry cells, and then those big tall 8 inch ones that were about 2 inches around, they had some name also. I believe it was set up by the government in some capacity, possibly the military. Could be wrong.

As far as why "A" then "AA", then "AAA" this probably comes from the way that guages are measured. As guage gets larger, you get closer to 0, then you have 00, 000, 0000. It was probably the same line of thought that cause the creater of the first battery smaller than the A to name it AA. Just speculation, but it makes sense.

This link explains what happened to the "B" cell:

http://exn.ca/Stories/1998/06/16/51.asp

Couldn't find much else on Google, because battery is such a common word, and "dry cell" gets you lots of biology links.

Re:My $$'s on fuel cells.

[jacquesm]

you can buy a fuel cell kit at
the fuel cell store

Speaking of battery size ...

[UnknownSoldier]

Does anyone know why sizes 'A' and 'B' aren't sold? Why the jump from AA to C ?

Cheers

Inexpensive batteries would be better

[Powercntrl]

Li-Ion batteries are a great improvement in terms of capacity over older NiCad and NiMH (Every time I see that, I think of that movie with the rats... but I digress.) technologies. In terms of price; however, I'm less than satisifed. My cell phone uses a Li-Ion battery and it seems like it's nearing the end of its useful life. You can imagine how shocked (pun intended) I was when I found out the cost of a replacement battery was equal to the cost I originally paid for the cell phone! The advances in battery technology are nice, but I'd be more than willing to accept bulkier batteries if they were a lot less costly.