Li-Ion With 300% More Power, Minutes to Recharge

Battery Nut writes "Altair Nanotechnologies claims to have found a way to reduce Li-Ion recharge time to minutes, as well as increase battery power by 300%, according to this press release. Seems they have received some good feedback by certain experts about thier work: "Two eminent experts in battery technology, Dr. K. M. Abraham and Dr. Vassilis G. Keramidas, have expressed strong support for Altair's work. " So is it a new revolution in battery technology, or hopeful hype? Stay tuned, their quarterly conference call is Thursday Feb 24th at 11AM." Anyone else think snake oil?

Comments

Mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

Mirror:
http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/2807875cb6676ed09 4a874986d9cdd32/index.html

Seems almost reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the article, they use a Lithium titanium oxide nanomaterial. Best gues, the nanocrystals typically have little or no stress and a low defect density, as well as an extremely high surface to volume ratio. All of these should improve the efficiency and speed of the battery operation. This might also increase the speed that the battery can discharge. Of course, I am not a battery specialist. Just in nanomaterials development. Might not be snake oil. Assuming all the accolades are true... well, Altair doesn't have a reputation for falsifying data. I look forward to seeing this develop.

Re:Seems almost reasonable

[Alceste]

That's actually not true. Nanometer sized crystals have large surface to volume ratios than bulk crystals, creating more surface defects per unit mass. The defects within a bulk crystal can be annealed to an equilibrium number, the same as those in a nano-crystal per unit mass. Thus, since battery performance is based on unit mass, you need the name weight of nano-crystals or bulk crystals to get the same capacity (to an order of magnitude, some papers show that surface defects actually INCREASE capacity, nifty stuff).

In addition, Li(z)Ti(x)O(y) is a system that undergoes phase changes during Lithium intercalation and deintercalation (as the battery discharges the "z" goes from 1 to 0). So the crystals are being made a-new with each charge discharge cycle (increasing cycle life, but this is something that also happens in the bulk, no need for nano whatnot).

Interestingly, the energy/power density with lithium titanium oxides is actually lower than that for carbons. A battery with a lithium cobalt oxide cathode and a lithium graphite anode will have a maximum potential of 4.2 V. The battery in question in the article actually sits around 3.0 V.

Finally, the failure mechanism for lithium ion batteries is not the anode, but the area just outside the anode called the SEI layer. This is a passivation layer formed adjacent to the anode by reaction of the neutral lithium with the organic electrolyte. This layer forms initially by irreversibly consuming some lithium, but if the charge/discharge rate is moderate it becomes stable and actually protects the anode. If the charge/discharge is too high, though, the layer breaks and more lithium is consumed to repair it, thus diminishing capacity. After enough of these cycles the batter will dramatically lose capacity.

Thus, the breakthrough in question must deal with a way of maintaining a stronger SEI layer, but it is most definitely at the cost of a lower potential battery.

Hard hat required

[bo0ork]

Assume your laptop has 4000 mAh (or 4 Ah). Triple that is 12 Ah. If my old memory serves, recharging 12Ah in 5 minutes would then require 144 ampere.

They should add a warning label: "May require personal nuclear reactor, shrapnel shields and additional fire insurance payments."

Re:Hard hat required

[pong]

My laptop battery has a voltage rating of 10.8. The amount of energy in Joules on a battery with a voltage of 10.8V and power rating of 12Ah, would be

E = 10.8V * 12Ah = 129.6Wh = 467 KJ (3600 J/Wh)

E = P * t, so P = E / t

P = 467 KJ / (5 * 60) secs = 1555W

1555W is less than many hair driers

Re:Actually, 200% more power

[Angstroem]

Actually...yes.

1x: 0% more
2x: 100% more
3x: 100%+100%=200% more

And that one even got rated "informative", sheesh.

Re:Seems about due

[scubaed]

For those that don't want to take the time to look at the article (and before it gets /.'ed), here is the meat:

"The nanomaterials Altair is developing are the next generation of electrode materials for lithium-ion batteries and Altair's research and product development is laying the ground work for a new generation of ultra high power lithium ion batteries." commented Dr. K. M. Abraham. "A key requirement to the above applications is the ability to recharge the battery very quickly, for example in a few minutes. Current Li Ion batteries are incapable of such quick charge times because of the chemistry of the anode materials. Altair has found a solution to this with their nano-sized lithium titanium oxide."

"Altair's nanomaterials, which have a virtually zero strain crystal lattice, eliminate the main cause for battery electrode material fatigue, which limits rechargeable battery life, increasing the number of recharge and discharge cycles from a few hundred to many thousand cycles," said Dr. Vassilis G. Keramidas. "I find Altair's development strategy and proposed research direction sound and a necessary step in establishing the Li-Ion electrochemistry as a viable contender for large battery applications."

Sounds promising (though if I hear the nano prefix again it'll make me barf). So no, it's not a new way to recharge batteries Li-Ion batteries, it's new batteries that can be recharged faster.

Let's hope that they can manage the lawsuits after the first batch starts to catch fire.

Article on Yahoo

[Anonymous Coward]

More detail and not yet Slashdotted; http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/050210/080729.html

Patents

[Halo1]

They do have pending patents on things like that all over the world, but of course that doesn't really mean anything (anyone can have a patent pending on pretty much everything, and even if granted that doesn't really mean all that much...)

Re:Snakeoil????

[Zoyd]

IO ERROR writes:
> I certainly hope it isn't snake oil.
> It would be nice to be able to watch
> a DVD movie on my laptop all the way
> through on battery alone.

Power is not energy. NiCad has more power per weight than LiIon. LiIon has more energy per weight than NiCad. This new technology might not give LiIon any more energy per weight than it already has.

Re:Electric Cars?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Generally, cables need to be large to carry lots of current. Power isn't directly involved. You could double the voltage, keep the current the same and significantly increase the power involved without being less safe. A cable's capacity ratings are in current and the breakdown voltage of insulation.

Not a Hype

[Compile 'em all]

The site is already down. And it doesn't look like another hype(at least to me). It seems that those guys have actually done something. Read on :

RENO, NV--(MARKET WIRE)--Feb 10, 2005 -- Altair Nanotechnologies, Inc. (NasdaqSC:ALTI - News) announced today that it has achieved a breakthrough in Lithium Ion battery electrode materials, which will enable a new generation of rechargeable battery to be introduced into the marketplace, as well as create new markets for rechargeable batteries. These new materials allow rechargeable batteries to be manufactured that have three times the power of existing Lithium Ion batteries at the same price and with recharge times measured in a few minutes rather than hours.

The technical achievements are being praised by the battery community as truly remarkable and will likely enable a new generation of rechargeable battery to be produced. Altair has confidentiality agreements in place with some of the world's leading battery development companies to evaluate and commercialize these battery electrode materials.

Altair's research and development efforts were allowed two new patents (announced on January 7th and 14th, 2005) and a National Science Foundation grant was successfully completed in January, 2005, by Altair. New markets for fast charging batteries will include the handheld power tools market increasing the productivity of, for example, construction workers while lowering their overhead costs. Other markets include hybrid electric vehicles, portable electronics and medical surgery tools -- solving the problem of electrical wires all over the operating room floor.

Rest of article can be found here
http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/050210/080729.html

Coral cache couldn't catch it BUT... *MIRROR*

[caryw]

Here's the press release on a different site:
http://press.arrivenet.com/aut/article.php/584418. html
Feel free to rip this server a new asshole as well.
Slashdot better not be teasing me with vaporware again! I get angry when teased!
--
Fairfax Underground: Where Fairfax County comes out to play

Re:Snakeoil????

[OmniVector]

try ripping the dvd to your hard drive first. that greatly reduces power consumption

Re:Snakeoil????

[MindStalker]

Doing fine? Their current stock value is sco 4.06 that compares to 20 dollars a year and half ago.

Note: anyone looking for SCO look up SCOXE, it used to be SCOX, but now SCOX is someone else.... very confusing.

3x max current, not capacity

[fhage]

According to http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section=communique &newsid=7681 "The nanomaterials Altair is developing are the next generation of electrode materials for lithium-ion batteries and Altair's research and product development is laying the ground work for a new generation of ultra high power lithium ion batteries," commented Dr. K. M. Abraham. "A key requirement to the above applications is the ability to recharge the battery very quickly, for example in a few minutes. Current Li Ion batteries are incapable of such quick charge times because of the chemistry of the anode materials. Altair has found a solution to this with their nano-sized lithium titanium oxide."

Current Li batteries are very limited in their max current. This make them poor choices for high current applications, like electric motors. It won't make your laptop run any longer, but you'll be able to charge it 3x faster.

Re:Electric Cars?

[forand]

You cannot do this while charging a battery. The voltage MUST be kept below the voltage of the battery or you will start doing funky things with the battery.

This is more clear when you realize that current is exactly what is needed to charge a battery. The battery needs to move electrons from one pool to another this is moving current.

Re:Electric Cars?

[Anonymous Coward]

You won't want too high a voltage or you may have arcing hazard occuring too. I would think that you would want high amps to do a quick recharge. The problem with high amps would be that heating of the cables would probably be limiting. Normal cells are 1.5 Volts each anyway so the current recharging would be proportional to the amount of power to be stored. Power = V*I in Direct current. But V = I*R
so Power = I^2*R
V = volts
I = amperes
R = resistance

Re:Snakeoil????

[Sircus]

SCOX will be used again as soon as SCO do their filings. SCOXE just means Nasdaq have sent them a delisting notice due to delinquent paperwork requirements. If SCO manage to recover from that status, they're back to plain SCOX. Personally, I'm hoping for SCOXQ...

Re:Snakeoil?

[khrtt]

Current lithium batteries are slow to recharge because they have a high internal resistance, and low tolerance for overvoltage. A typical battery cell with 3.6V idle voltage takes no more than 4.3V when charging, and the .7V drop over the internal resistance allows very little current through the battery, which is why it takes 3hr to recharge fully.

The article gives no details, but they talk about nanomaterials in the elctrodes. My best guess would be, they came up with a way to increase the surface area of the electrode, lowering the internal resistance a 100 fold or so. Expect this battery to explode in your face if shorted.

when to sell?

[Sean Clifford]

The only question is... do you dump the stock before the conference call, or do you expect the hype to endure?

Disclaimer: This is not investment advice, but my own personal opinion. I am not a financial advisor, I'm just an IT geek and web developer.

My two cents:

I'd sell before the conference call. In this case I would have already doubled my stake, it would be time for me to cash out. Stock is not money.

It's very very hard not to get caught up in the moment. I'd rather miss the next Google than suffer an Enron. If I'm going to speculate again, I'll do it wisely.

My rules:

Stick to your guns - if you're up by X percentage, sell. If you're down by Y percentage, sell.

Never, ever, *EVER* day trade with money you cannot afford to lose. Under *no circumstances* do you ever put all of your money into a single stock. Or even a single industry. Doing any of these is roulette, not speculative investment.

My personal opinion is that it's better to go with a stock market index fund and invest for the long term than it is to day trade. If long term investment is good enough for Warren Buffett, it's good enough for me. I don't have his savvy; hence an index fund.

These guys are published

[Super Happy Fun Chem]

Both of these guys have publications (100+ a piece assuming that I have the right guys) and for the most part they appear to be Tier-I and II journals (peer reviewed materials). What strikes me is that Keramidas isnt a battery chemist, he's a thin film semiconductor/ferroelectric materials guy. Abraham is just what the article says, a electrochemical researcher with lots of publications in Li based materials.

Is it really 3 times the power?

[grahamsz]

If so then it's only going to allow power to flow out of the battery 3 times faster, allowing a whole new generation of power-hungry athalon laptops (at 1/3rd of the current battery life)

However if it were 3 times the ENERGY then it'd make existing laptops run for 3 times longer.

Re:Snakeoil?

[tlhIngan]

Current lithium batteries are slow to recharge because they have a high internal resistance, and low tolerance for overvoltage. A typical battery cell with 3.6V idle voltage takes no more than 4.3V when charging, and the .7V drop over the internal resistance allows very little current through the battery, which is why it takes 3hr to recharge fully.

Actually, LiIon has a low internal resistance - it's somewhere between that of NiCd and NiMH chemistries (when new). However, as it ages (i.e., the moment it leaves the factory), the internal resistance gets higher and higher until it can no longer usefully power the load (generally 2-5 years after manufacture).

The reason LiIon is slow to charge is because it requires a complex charge regimen. Plus you can't trickle charge them (destroys them). So you charge them at a constant current up around 90% or so, then switch to constant voltage until the cell stops accepting charge. Then you stop and switch off the charger until it drains to around 95% (estimated), and do a CV charge again.

The end result is you get around 90% charge very quickly, but the last 10% take forever as the charger puts in less and less current.

Charge it incorrectly and they go boom.

Re:Snakeoil?

[Dun Malg]

But what if the fuse doesn't work? Then you're still left with an exploding battery. Then what?

WTF are you talking about? A "fuse [that] doesn't work" is one that's already burned out. There is no such thing as a "defective" fuse that lets way too much current through. Fuses are safety devices. Fuse manufacturers are very careful for reasons of liability. Your "what if" is as irrelevant as "what if tires were TRIANGULAR?"

Re:Snakeoil????

[Neph]

For anyone else wondering what the "Q" suffix means: NASDAQ fifth letter codes

I agree, I would be delighted to see SCOXQ.

Re:Seems about due

[reverseengineer]

From this page:

The successful utilization of a carbon host to store lithium ions in the rechargeable negative electrode has led to the commercial development of lithium-ion cells. In commercial cells, the positive electrode is primarily a lithiated metal oxide, which also contains graphite to improve the electronic conductivity of the electrode.

The electrochemical reaction at the negative electrode in lithium-ion cells is the intercalation of lithium ions into graphite: the lithium ions in the electrolyte enter the space between the layer planes of graphite during charge. The distance between the graphite layer planes expands by about 10% to accommodate the lithium ions. The resulting material can be chemically represented as LixC6. When the cell is discharged, the lithium ions are removed from the graphite structure and return to the electrolyte. The maximum amount of lithium ions that is stored in graphite is equivalent to x = 1 (LiC6). Other carbons have been used which yield values of "x" that may be greater or less than one. One of the attractive features of this electrode is long cycle life that is observed when the reversible insertion and removal of lithium ions occur without mechanical degradation of the graphite structure. Currently, lithium-ion technology represents the most rapidly growing (in production volume) rechargeable battery system in the world.

So, it doesn't appear to be a true ionic salt, in the sense that something like lithium chloride would be. This sort of intercalation is a good demonstration of how while "chemical bond" usually conjures up an image of solid spheres connected by a rod, like in those plastic model sets, in actuality a bond can be delocalized. In particular, there is a fascinating group of substances known as the metallocenes which feature a metal ion sandwiched between planar carbon rings. Not bonded to a carbon, but instead complexed with the entire aromatic ring structure. Graphite consists of planes of these carbon ring systems fused together to form a planar sheet (graphene). While strong covalent bonds hold carbon atoms in a graphene plane together, far weaker forces hold the planes together, so that lithium ions can squeeze in between and take up residence. As such, lithium ion batteries are quite different from, say alkaline batteries in that rather than the production of current by a reduction/oxidation reaction between a pair of substances. In Li-ion batteries, the potential is provided by lithium ions themselves shuttling out of the graphite lattice- as the grandparent noted, they are sometimes referred to as "rocker" or "swing" batteries because of the back-and-forth movement of Li ions through use and recharge cycles.

In general, carbon has some rather limited and screwy ionic chemistry, owing to its place on the periodic table- there's a distinct preference for covalent rather than ionic bonding - even carbon halides are generally considered covalent. Carbocations and carbanions are both important species in organic chemistry reactions, but in most cases are not very stable- they tend to be transition states that end up as an uncharged final product. There are of course many known organic ion compounds- acetate ion, from acetic acid (vinegar) is a familar example- but generally it ends up being other atoms in the compound, usually oxygen or nitrogen, which can actually be said to carry the charge most of the time. Even in organometallic compounds, generally the metal-carbon bond has covalent character- there are some important exceptions though, usually brought about using very strong nonaqueous bases like sodium amide. Even "carbide" compounds are generally network solids, which is to say, covalent. Calcium carbide, CaC2, might qualify, though if you try to dissolve it in water, you do not get carbide ions in solution, but rather acetylene gas. You can of course make ionic compounds out of any element- just provide the

Re:Some hard facts

[serbanp]

Fully agree with the parent poster. These guys just wanted to pump-up their stock price with BS statements. It looks they've been successful at that.

Not only they blurr the line intentionally between power and capacity, but also they liberally use the nano-* buzzword.

A three-fold increase in the battery capacity would be an enormous advancement. LiIon is already the highest energy-density type of battery, so it would matter a lot.

Maybe they merely found a way in decreasing the internal resistance; advanced LiPoly batteries already do this and there are 2000mAh types rated at 15-20 C discharge rate.

Charging them, however, still requires no more than 2 C. Chemistry has its own reaction rate and no amount of snake-oil will speed it up.

If this thingie has any value, it may be for miniature batteries, but don't hold your breath.

Re:Seems about due

[Jimmy Nail]

I actually work as an engineer in the industry for what it's worth. A few things. As other posters have pointed out, their claims are careful and consistent- they seem to have a high power/current material.

First, this is very possible. Nearly ALL work in Li-ion right now is focused on two areas- lowering costs and increasing current. Capacity is kind of at a practical limit (safety concerns) right now and companies are looking elsewhere for development. Achieving higher currents (and thus power) in a li-ion cell is seen as a very achievable and profitable goal so every company is chasing it.

Actually, two new REAL high power cells were recently announced. This isn't just new cathode material, there are shipping product. See these press releases related stories:

http://www.jsonline.com/bym/news/jan05/292378.as p
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/200412/ 04- 060E/

I can promise you that these cells are not vapour. They are shipping right now.

Lastly, a fantabulous material does not a cell make. If true, they've got about 1/10 the way to actually cranking out batteries. Making a li-ion cells is damn hard and the electrode materials are only a small part of the overall picture. The two battery companies mentioned in the press releases above achieved their high power designs through about 20% material innovation and 80% mechanical/physical design and configuration.

Long time reader, first time poster,

-JN

Re:Need expert opinion here

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

All rechargable batteries have a fixed number of recharge cycles. How many cycles you can get out of the battery depends on:

- Battery chemistry (e.g. Li-Ion vs. Ni-MH)
- Manufacturing tolerences (how well is the product built)
- Environmental considerations (temperature of storage, etc.)
- Charging methods (e.g. overcharging / charging too quickly)
- Cycle depth

It's best with Li-Ion to cycle the battery as little as possible. Depending on how deeply - and how frequently - you discharge the battery, you may experience reduced lifespan.

It's bad to overcharge, but modern Li-Ion battery packs won't allow themselves to be overcharged. There's nothing wrong in leaving your notebook plugged in all the time.

Re:Nuclear is better!

[diablomonic]

I think you guys are misunderstanding: 3X more POWER not SPECIFIC POWER ie: 3 the power output in watts, not energy content in amp hours X volts, basicly, similar energy content, but you can get that enrgy into and out of the battery much more quickly, and it has a much longer life.

Doesnt sound like snake oil to me, as using nano structures vastly increases surface area available for chemical reactions to take place, which speeds reaction times, so id give it a 80% chance of not being a con. Also quite usefull as low comparitive power output (as compareed to energy or specific power)is one of the drawbacks of lithium, and hell, whos gonna complain at an extra few thousand charges?