Nanowires Boost Laptop Battery Life to 20 Hours

brianmed writes to tell us that Stanford researchers have created a new use for silicon nanowires that promise to reinvent lithium-ion batteries. "The new version, developed through research led by Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, produces 10 times the amount of electricity of existing lithium-ion, known as Li-ion, batteries. A laptop that now runs on battery for two hours could operate for 20 hours, a boon to ocean-hopping business travelers. [...] The lithium is stored in a forest of tiny silicon nanowires, each with a diameter one-thousandth the thickness of a sheet of paper. The nanowires inflate four times their normal size as they soak up lithium. But, unlike other silicon shapes, they do not fracture."

Comments

Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Apple Acolyte]

Now with 10 times the explosive power.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[irving47]

No doubt. I can imagine a rush of customers desperately seeking a 1-inch thick titanium plate to stick between their laptop and their 'valuables'.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[mpe]

Now with 10 times the explosive power.

How long before laptop batteries get classified as "munitions"?

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[MightyYar]

I was going to say that you are being funny, but this doesn't increase the amount of lithium in the battery - but it looks like you may actually not be funny at all... I think there is 10x as much lithium in these batteries!

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[ZeroFactorial]

It grows up to 4 times the original size and can go for 20 hours?

They're going to put Extenze (and Viagra) out of business with a product like this.

On the bright side we won't have to see any more commercials of the chick with the freaky eyes.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[arivanov]

No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There is always a boom tomorrow. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEsFB2GPy24

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[GospelHead821]

It's sort of funny that you should say that. I work for a company that manufactures some battery-powered instruments. We actually have to ship the batteries separately from the instruments because they classify as a more hazardous material than the rest of the shipment.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[192939495969798999]

Not only that, but when it explodes in your lap, you get riddled with nanowire superpowers! And mostly in the very area that your laptop's radiation has probably been eroding your powers.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Anonymous Coward]

>No doubt. I can imagine a rush of customers desperately seeking a 1-inch thick titanium plate to stick between their laptop and their 'valuables'.

The value of items are only what people are willing to pay for it

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Pendersempai]

That's because they contain heavy metals, not because they're explosive.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[gweihir]

Actually energy contents is already higher than some explosives. The current limitation is that you cannot releaste the energy in a short burst.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Xentor]

Even without clicking the youtube link... Lieutenant-Commander Ivanova... Babylon 5. Good quote :)

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[timeOday]

How does the power density of these compare to gasoline? We can make lots of jokes about them blowing up and being munitions, but first I'd like to see a comparison between one of these and 0.1 gallons of gasoline.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[cashman73]

In a related story, the TSA has now banned laptop computers from all commercial flights in the USA.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[ByOhTek]

yeah, but chances are, they'll aim for smaller batteries rather than just longer lasting.

Batteries of 1/5th the size and twice the battery life. A lot of companies say they want to work on longer battery life, but what they don't say is they don't want to trade weight for it. Youc an always add more battery life by adding more battery weight. Personally, I wouldn't mind swapping my 1/2kg LiIon for a 2kg LiIon for 4x the battery life in some cases, but apparantly not many people agree.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Anonymous Coward]

And all TSA employees are now out of jobs, because the airline industry just went bankrupt.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Hal_Porter]

How does the power density of these compare to gasoline? Lousy

http://wiki.xtronics.com/index.php/Energy_density

Material Volumetric(Wh/l)Gravimetric (Wh/kg)

Fission of U-235 4.7 x 1012 2.5 x1010
Boron 38,278 16361
JP10 (dicyclopentadiene)10,975 11,694
Diesel 10,942 13,762
Gasoline 9,700 12,200
Black Coal solid =>CO2 9444 6667
LNG 7,216 12,100
Propane (liquid) 7,500 - 6,600 13,900
Black Coal Bulk =>CO2 6278 6667
Ethanol 6,100 7,850
Methanol 4,600 6,400
Liquid H2 2,600 39,000
Secondary LiOn Polymer 300 130 - 1200
Secondary Lithium-Ion 300 110
Nickel Metal Hydride 100 Wh/l 60Wh/kg
Lead Acid Battery 40 25
Propane (Gas - 1 bar) 28.1 13,900
Compressed Air 17 34
Ice to water 9.3 9.3

If this new battery is 10x as efficient it is still 3x worse than gasoline.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Anonymous Coward]

Because, as we all know:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfNZnOp1iHU

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Total_Wimp]

I doubt you'll have to worry about this for awhile. While everyone is looking at this as longer battery life, the more probable initial use will be to make smaller, lighter batteries with the same, or just a little more, power as you're currently used to.

This is going to be expensive in the beginning. Companies will be looking for a way to leverage the new tech without the battery becoming more expensive than all the other parts combined. But they might still have an advantage without breaking the bank too badly if they can offer smaller notebooks.

But what about your cell phone? Surely they'll want to give you 20 hours of talk time? Same thing here. Size is a really big deal in handheld devices. You can bet Apple will have more interest in making iphones 1/8 of an inch thinner than giving you a product you could use for a week straight without recharging. Of course, cost is likely to be a factor here as well.

Then there's you folks. If the cost were exactly the same, and you had to choose between long life and better portability, how would you choose? Laptop makers very often offer extended life batteries that happen to be kind of bulky. Sometimes they offer batteries that aren't bulky, but they take up your optical drive. I've seen a couple of people use these, but only a couple. Same thing with cell phones. Most cell phones let you swap batteries to your heart's content, but most people just don't buy spare batteries, and even fewer buy the bulky extended life batteries.

As much as they bitch about battery life, I think the truth is that what most people have is kind of ok with them most of the time. Sure, you might need better life, and I'm sure you'll be able to get it, much like you can get it now, but I think laptop manufacturers are going to tend to serve the masses for most of their products.

"But wait!" you say, "the whole idea is that you can have more power plus a smaller size." Well, not really. When this tech becomes available, the comparison won't be with lithium whatever batteries. The comparison will be with devices that have the new tech, but less of it. All of a sudden a battery the size of your current laptop battery will look like a huge, heavy beasts compared to the new ones. You'll gladly have only 5 hours of battery life instead of carrying around something so _heavy_(how did you ever manage it?).

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Rei]

Well, let's go with 200 Wh/kg for conventional li-ion batteries. Thios would be 2000 Wh/kg, i.e., 7.2 MJ/kg. Gasoline has an energy density of about 45 MJ/kg.

Of course, you're comparing the energy density of the stored electricity, not of the chemical energy of the battery as a whole, which isn't really fair.

Anyways, let's look at vehicle range. The gasoline has 6.25 times the energy density, but only burns at 25-30% efficiency in the engine. The charge/discharge of lithium-ion batteries is almost lossless. The motor would be 85-90% efficient. Looks like, kilogram per kilogram, gasoline gets twice the range. On the other hand, there are other practical considerations -- namely, the fact that electric motors are much smaller and lighter than an internal combustion engine. I wouldn't be surprised if you could shave a hundred, hundred fifty kilograms off the engine/motor mass by switching from ICE to electric. If you filled this remaining space with batteries, that'd be ~900MJ, the equivalent of 20 gallons of gasoline, extra for the electric vehicle. Factor in a 12 gallon gas tank that's being replaced by electric (that's what my Saturn has, so that's the number I'm using), that's the equivalent of 26 gallons of range for the electric and 12 gallons of range for the gasoline vehicle. The electric goes over twice as far. But it gets even better, as you'll only get your optimum 25-30% gasoline efficiency at the optimal RPM; they perform poorly at low speeds, for example. Electrics perform well over a wide range. Then you need to factor in that the electric has all of the benefits of hybrid vehicles already there -- regenerative braking, no waste at stop lights, and so forth. All in all, I'd expect around three times more range with an electric using batteries like these than you get in a gasoline vehicle. And to top it all off, given that they're using nanowires, the surface are will be incredible, so the charge time should be very fast -- just a few minutes.

If this is legit, and if there aren't any degradation or safety problems that sneak up on them, when it comes out, gasoline vehicles can be expected to go "extinct" quite quickly. Who *wouldn't* want to be able to drive a thousand, perhaps even two thousand miles on a single charge, at a price of 1-2 cents per mile?

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[AJH16]

It may still not be as efficient as gasoline by wait, but last time I checked, I can't recharge my gasoline. If you know a way to do this, I would be most apreciative.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, he's actually probably talking about the lithium taggings required to prevent them from being shipped on passenger airline planes. You want to ship them via Fedex or UPS cargo ONLY planes.

Your heavy metals argument is fictional.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice list thanks for the link.
Now for someone to add hydrogen fusion energy density, and theoretical mater/antimatter battery...

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[OwnedByTwoCats]

Gasoline 9,700 12,200

...
Secondary LiOn Polymer 300 130 - 1200

Do the rest of the math.

300 * 10 is 3000, so gasoline still stores three times as much potential chemical energy as the battery. But converting chemical potential energy into motion through an internal combustion engine is about 30% efficient, while power electronics and electric motors net between 80 and 95% efficient.

• Battery: 3000 * 0.8 = 2400
• Gasoline: 9,700 * 0.3 = 2910

so getting batteries to within 80% of gasoline (i.e. same volumetric energy density as a vehicle fuel as ethanol) really is revolutionary.

If these Li-Ion batteries are on the lighter end of the scale, the energy/weight figures could be extrordinary.

• Battery: 1200 * 10 (improvement from research) * 0.8 (efficiency) = 9600 watt-hours traction per kilogram
• Gasoline: 12200 * 0.3 (efficiency) = 3660 watt-hours traction per kilogram.

This is breakthrough territory.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Niten]

That's all right, just wait until we're all using supercapacitor-powered laptops...

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[McNihil]

You need to factor in an entire industry needing to be retooled in that final figure. The cost will stay the same as with gasoline I am quite certain about that no matter how good technology becomes. There is a lot of amortized payment on infrastructure that would need to be payed somehow.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[TomorrowPlusX]

If this new battery is 10x as efficient it is still 3x worse than gasoline.

No argument here, but consider how poorly we make use of energy from gasoline ( at least in cars, trucks, etc ). My understanding of electric motors is that not only do they convert energy to torque much more efficiently, but they don't need a transmission, differential or CV joints ( the latter two if you're using one motor per drive wheel ), which lose quite a bit of torque to heat/sound.

Just saying. Batteries might suck in comparison to gasoline, but if you can convert more of their stored energy to motion, well, it sound slike a win to me.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[chris_eineke]

And that's why atomic reactors are munitions. :-)

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[drinkypoo]

Do the rest of the math yourself - most of the power in the world comes from fossil fuel sources, burnt to produce steam (loss) which is used to produce electricity (loss) which is transmitted (loss) to the place where the batteries are recharged. Batteries are energy-intensive to produce as well. The total energy use of a hybrid automobile, for example, is going to be far more than that of a TDI-based vehicle which gets the same mileage (especially on the new mileage tests) primarily because of the batteries - I'm talking total lifetime here. But my real point in all of this is that you are not considering the "rest of the math". That power has to come from somewhere. I actually heard someone excuse Arnold's Hummer the other day by pointing out that it runs on Hydrogen. Where do they think the hydrogen comes from? In the same vein, where do you think the electricity comes from?

On the flip side, improving battery energy density is a major step for a broad variety of reasons, not the least of which is that you typically reduce the total lifetime energy cost of systems which use batteries when you reduce the mass of the batteries themselves.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Hal_Porter]

Antimatter would be e=2mc^2. E.g. 1 kilo of antimatter would combine with 1 kilo of air (or some other matter)

Dividing by 3600J gives 5 * 10^13 Wh/kilogram

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=(2kg+*+(c%5E2)%2F++3%2C600&btnG=Search

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[_Quinn]

The big win is that we can more readily regulate emissions from stationary power plants (of higher efficiency that an IC engine), and weight is not a concern for the scrubbers and filters. Further along in the future, changing the problem from synthesizing gasoline to generating electricity more cleanly is an even bigger win.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[eth1]

There are still a few problems, though.

The first is heat from charging. If you use your figure of 900MJ, and charging is 90% efficient, that means you have to dissipate 90MJ of heat during the charge. 1J = 1Ws, so 90MJ is 25kWh of heat energy. That's 1kW if charging takes one day, or 4kW if it takes 6 hours. That's probably way too much heat for the battery/car to take. (assuming my math/conversions are correct!) Of course, that only applies if you're charging all at once. Charge time wouldn't be as much of an issue if you charge whenever you're not using the car.

The other issue is that we (US) have nowhere near the generation capacity to handle a nation full of electric cars. We'd have to start building a lot of extra capacity, seeing as how we sometimes have a hard time keeping up with demand as it is. On the other hand, everyone having a huge battery plugged into the grid could do a lot to help smooth out peak demand.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[JoshHeitzman]

A PDA/phone can only get so small and so thin. It can only get so small because we need to be able to see what is on the screen. It can only get so thin as needs be strong enough not break in under common usage stresses (unless they can figure out how to make all of the components flexible so they won't break). Now a pure phone could be shrunk down to be just be an ear piece so long as the voice recognition software was good enough and something that small would indeed need a very small battery. The PDA screen could eventually be shrunk down to a flip up eyepiece that would attach to glasses or a headset for non-glasses wearers and that would again need a very small battery for those who don't mind talking to their computer (personally I'd still want an input system that utilized the hands or someday a direct neural jack). Both of those are form factor changes though. Phones in their current phone factor can only get so small though.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Darkman, Walkin Dude]

Then there's you folks. If the cost were exactly the same, and you had to choose between long life and better portability, how would you choose?

I think most techies would choose longer life - I know I certainly did. The prettiest screen and most powerful processor is exactly no use to you if it runs out of battery. Then its just a glorified doorstop.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Hal_Porter]

Hmm, fair point.

I got 20% efficiency for 4 stroke gasoline engines, vs 85% for brushless DC electric motors.

Actually there's an article here that quotes the density of the new battery as 3000Wh/kg.. 12200 as an energy density for old Lithium Ion batteries is completely bogus by the way.

So
12,200*0.2 = 2440
vs
3000*0.85 = 2550

Not as good as you said since the battery still has 4x worse energy density but you're right that engine efficiency makes up for it.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[jank1887]

funny. how do you afford to drive a car that you have to throw out when the tank runs dry? I'm shocked that you would ever even buy such a thing. Recharge = refill.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Rei]

. If you use your figure of 900MJ, and charging is 90% efficient

There's your problem right there. Li-ion batteries have a charge efficiency of around 99.9%; you're two orders of magnitude off. Even if you go off by an order of magnitude and say 99% efficient, assuming a specific heat of 1J/g*C, with 7.2MJ/kg, that's only a 72 degree rise in temperature over 5 minutes or so (240W of heat), which a cooling system could easily manage (your computer case fan probably dissipates more heat than that). With the actual 99.9% efficiency, it's a 7.2 degree rise in temperature and 24W of heat, respectively.

The other issue is that we (US) have nowhere near the generation capacity to handle a nation full of electric cars.

Another widespread false concern. The fact is that the US has significant surplus generation capacity at night, more than enough to begin the transition (it's not like everyone collectively throws out their vehicles and switches at once). Furthermore, it's much *cheaper* to build new electricity production infrastructure than it is to produce gasoline production infrastructure. And, for gasoline-powered cars, you have to keep producing new gasoline-production infrastructure even when gasoline demand remains constant since oil fields run dry. You're just replacing one type of infrastructure demand with another -- one that's easier to meet to boot.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[SparkleMotion88]

Not only that, but when it explodes in your lap, you get riddled with nanowire superpowers! And mostly in the very area that your laptop's radiation has probably been eroding your powers.

Yes, but referring to yourself as NanoMan probably isn't going to help your chances with the ladies.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Anonymous Coward]

A gas engine in a car is only 12%-15% efficient in the form of turning the gas into momentum. Most of the energy is released as friction in the engine.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Rei]

Oh, and just to give you an idea of energy consumption: at 150 Wh/mi, with an average of 40 miles driven per day, that's 6 kWh of electricity per day for the car, i.e. 180 kWh a month. Peak AC demand in the US comes in July, so we're really limited by our midday July generation capacity. An average 2000 square foot Miami home will burn about 2000 kWh in July to keep the house at 77F. That's just the air conditioner alone. Assuming the AC runs at 1/3 the rate at night, then that's 500 kWh during the night and 1500 during the day. You'd have to charge *three* electric cars, each driven for 40 miles a day, to equal the amount of demand that the reduced air conditioning load freed up. Even if you consider places with cooler summers, it's pretty hard to use up our non-peak generation capacity.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Rei]

Whoops, sorry, I did my math wrong: you'd have to charge *5 1/2* electric cars driven 40 miles per day, not 3, to equal the energy freed up by the reduced operation of the AC at night.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Total_Wimp]

Current batteries take up mores space and weight than you may think. If you take your current cell phone and pull off the battery cover and take out the battery, you can feel, and in most cases kind of picture, what your phone might be like if it had a battery a tenth the size. With my phone it's a pretty significant difference.

I use this comparison because you don't have to change form factors to immediately see a benefit. I have a Cingular 8125. It's a couple of generations old, but the new AT&T Tilt has almost the same dimensions. These are bulky phones. Almost every day of the year I have enough battery power for what I do with the phone, but every single day I have to carry around that bulk. if it were a quarter inch thinner, it would be a very big improvement while still keeping a very useful form factor.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Rei]

A gas engine in a car is only 12%-15% efficient in the form of turning the gas into momentum. Most of the energy is released as friction in the engine

From here:

"Today?s efficiency situation:

FUEL 100%
PUSHING THE PISTONS 35%
OVERCOMING ENGINE FRICTION AND PUMPING THE AIR AND FUEL (typical US driving condition) 20%"

Some ICEs on the road are more like 25% efficient in typical usage, but that's still nothing to boast about

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[eth1]

ah... 99.9% would make a bit of a difference!

Of course, then you run into another problem: 900MJ in one hour is 250kW. That's over 1,000A at 240V! The main breaker in my house is only rated at 200A!

Of course, it would provide some opportunities for profit... "hey, neighbor, pay up, or I plug my car in when the whistle blows for the superbowl kickoff and brown out the neighborhood!" >:)

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Rei]

Indeed. The standard is that cars in homes either charge "slowly" (a relative term) or purchase a "home charger" that is itself charged slowly but discharges quickly into the vehicle. Such a home charger can also provide backup power to the house and even do load balancing for the grid (which would probably get you a discount on your electric bill). "Gas" stations that end up as charging stations won't have this problem, as they'll almost certainly just get fatter wires installed.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[rs79]

"Batteries might suck in comparison to gasoline"

Ah yes but. In a car, an electric car, it had one property no gas power car can ever have - you can recharge it with sunlight. I work at home and I don't go on daily commutes. Some weeks I may go to the store a few times and that's it. A moderate solar array might in some cases eliminate or at least diminish the need to plug the car in and pay for electricty. There's a certain appeal to that that in some sense overrides all other desirable features in a car.

Now if these batteries can take a 2 hour laptop and give you 20 hours from it, uh does that mean the Tesla roadster now can do 4000 miles instead of 400 miles? That would be kinda significant...

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Anonymous Coward]

Energy densities from Hal_Porter's post :
-----
Material Volumetric(Wh/l)Gravimetric (Wh/kg)
Liquid H2 2,600 39,000
Secondary LiOn Polymer 300 130 - 1200
Secondary Lithium-Ion 300 110
-----

10 x 300 puts it at 3,000 (Wh/l) which is in the range of energy density (by volume) needed to compete with liquid H2.
BYE BYE "hydrogen economy"...

Even though Liquid Hydrogen has vastly superior energy density by weight you just don't have the space to store it. There are too many issues with hydrogen fuel, it's not a good energy storage medium and is not naturally available, you have to make it from electricity anyways (which comes from renewable/nuclear/fossil) ... just store the electricity directly instead in batteries. Hydrogen is never going to become a good fuel / energy source unless it's used in nuclear fusion.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[vegipowrd]

Let's also remember that less than 1% of the energy in the gas is used to accelerate the driver. This energy density is near that of liquid H2!

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[ArsonSmith]

Whoa that must be hell on your car purchases, I just go to the filling station and recharge my gas.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[snickkers]

No no no. You see, when you hook a battery up to a LED - you may need some extra bits like resistors, etc, but basically you don't need much to make it work. Petrol doesn't quite work that easily... when you compare the footprint of a battery vs petrol, you have to include the engines too. Having said that, you can get remote control cars with combustion engines, so they don't need to be full car-sized engines. But I think if we're going down that road, lets leave petrol behind and go straight to nukular power. In this documentary I saw, you can get nukular reactors in back-pack size. And that was way back in 1984. By now they must come in sizes no larger than my left big toe.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[PitaBred]

Why gas stations? We've already got substations that have huge voltages coming in to them... why not fill up there? Less infrastructure to tweak around.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[lemur666]

With these sorts of energy densities, it makes it possible to start building electric airplanes.

You can certainly run a propeller off an electric motor, and there's no reason you couldn't make an electric turbofan as well...

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Prune]

Fuel cells do not have the efficiency limitation of internal combustion engines. And you don't have to stick to specialty fuels like alcohols, considering there are gasoline fuel cells in the works.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Prune]

Fuel cells do not have internal combustion engine's efficiency limitation. And you don't have to stick to alcohols either, as there are gasoline fuel cells in the works.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Rei]

Hydrogen fuel cells are rather efficient (~70%), but other types of fuel cells tend not to be. Direct methanol, for example, is 20-30% for the cell, 10-20% for the system as a whole. I seem to recall that propane fuel cells are a ~35% efficient. Anyways, not very attractive for much. Now, one place where I think there's good promise for non-hydrogen fuel cells is in RVs -- namely, because you can have the waste heat run your water heater.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[i_b_don]

You kind of went off on a non-sequitur there. The previous articles weren't discussing "green" power or anything like that, they were talking about energy density of a power source. Nobody was talking about global warming or saving the earth in the parent's articles. I know that's where electrical/hybrid vehicles normally are talked about, but that wasn't the topic here.

I think this thread is much more interesting without the politics of all that being thrown in, especially considering the "your an idiot" tone I read from your post regarding the grand-parent post. Especially his/her information was much more interesting and on topic than yours.

d

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[polar red]

very nice table. but it is useless, you have to factor in the mechanicals needed to take out the energy.
You can have a few grams of U-235 in your car, but that won't make it move, you need a (very large, heavy and unwieldy) reactor to do that. - same goes for gas: it is compact, but last time i checked an engine running on gas weighs hundreds of Kg, while an electric motor weighs a few Kg - (that's why the electric car will eventually rule the highway - note: this will take a while, because carcompanies want you to pay them a lot of money on maintenance)

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[polar red]

OR: have a spare battery at home that charges when you are gone, when you return : switch used battery for charged battery.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[PingPongBoy]

How long before laptop batteries get classified as "munitions"?


This idea is really on to something. Consider the amount of energy that a small bit of explosives can release. Can nanotechnology slow the release of this energy to the point that it can be used as a portable energy supply?

All the same, forewarned is forearmed. Do not even be in the same room, building, or postal code with these new laptop batteries until we know they cannot be detonated by ordinary means such as shorting, heat, force, electricity, wetting, magnetic fields, sharp objects, etc. The energy per unit volume has been increased by an order of magnitude, and this may be comparable to a mini-grenade.

Perhaps society will be finally persuaded to provide enough wall outlets while I power my computer up to 2 hours with just 2 AA cells.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Rei]

Switching batteries is simply not realistic, at all. And pretty pointless when you have a fast charge/discharge. The fact is that batteries for an electric vehicle weigh several hundred pounds and need to be bolted in place (typically on the bottom of the vehicle for center of gravity reasons). It's not like changing batteries in a flashlight.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[jollyreaper]

Actually energy contents is already higher than some explosives. The current limitation is that you cannot releaste the energy in a short burst I could swear I read somewhere about research into using capacitors as explosives in certain weapons. I think what they need is going to be a near-future unobtanium but the idea is that such a device would be far safer to deal with than conventional explosives since it wouldn't be dangerous until a charge was put to it. Imagine a burning navy ship where none of the weapons were charged vs. one filled with chemical explosives.

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[instarx]

How long before batteries become classified as munitions?"

Or drugs.

The nanowires inflate four times their normal size as they soak up lithium.

Finally! A positive benefit for my lithium treatments for depression! Forget Viagra! FOUR times!!!

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Yold]

According to our friends at the U.S. govt, 70% of electricity comes from burning stuff. Coal, petroleum , natural gas, etc.
You are going to lose over 50% of the energy in the conversion process, and produce just as many hydrocarbons. In short, switching cars to electricity-engines does nothing for the environment.

I'd also imagine it'd be fairly difficult to get enough horsepower (torque * rpms) for comparable performance to a gasoline engine.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/sources/electricity.html

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, you're so depressingly right... (sigh)

Re:Sony Nanowire Batteries

[geriatrix]

The power density of the fuel supply is only part of the equation.

Gasoline fuels the internal combustion engine which has an efficiency of about 20% whereas the battery fuels an electric motor which has an efficiency of about 90%. This changes the maths somewhat

Whoa...

[DoofusOfDeath]

Hate to have one of those explode in my lap!

Promising

[jimbo3123]

The article makes this sound very promising.

It may very well be the leap that keeps battery technology ahead of ultra-capacitors for the foreseeable future.

Re:Promising

[Amouth]

i wonder if this helps with the "memory" problem that laptop batteries have.. i don't care what they say.. anyone that has ever used them know that this effect still exists and is a pain in the royal ass....

Re:Promising

[MightyYar]

I don't know what you are talking about - I don't have to completely discharge my Li-Ion batteries. In fact, I think completely discharging them seems to shorten their life considerably (based on charging my phone every other day vs. every day). You need to spend some quality time with some NiCd batteries again to remember what the memory effect was like! Got any power tools or RC cars around?

Re:Promising

[TooMuchToDo]

Lithium ion batteries don't suffer from the "memory effect". You're thinking of NiCd batteries.

Re:Promising

[explosivejared]

I'll say it sounds promising. A major hindrance to using alternative energy (eg solar), which is what most want to move to, to produce electricity is storing the power. The sun and wind, among other things, can't exactly be controlled manually to produce power on a whim. Inefficient storing is a major drawback. Any advance that improves storage capacity (for any platform) by an order of magnitude is promising to say the least. The article barely touched on how important this could be.

Re:Promising

[Anonymous Coward]

Not as promising as it sounds... from another article:

"It's a really nice proof of concept," says Gerbrand Ceder, a materials scientist and battery expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Making lithium ion batteries capable of holding 10 times the charge of conventional versions still requires a cathode that holds 10 times the charge, too, Ceder says. However, he adds, incorporating a silicon nanowire-based anode could allow batterymakers to reduce the weight and volume of the anode and add more cathode material in its place, which could give lithium batteries a power boost. That could make life a little easier for all of us.

Re:Promising

[geekoid]

"to produce electricity is storing the power."

A major hindrance is cost versus return. Assuming no degradation, it still take years to break even, and when considering the life of a panel you are lucky to break even before disposal.

If I could spend 2 grand and break even in a year, and get five years of use out of it I would be solar ASAP. As it stands it's still not practical for most people.

Solar isn't there yet. Sure it's a lot better then in the 70s.

Now what you could do is use it to store energy gathered from the power company during non peak hours. That would save money and energy. Of course, it depends on how much these things will cost.

Re:Promising

[gweihir]

Lithium ion batteries don't suffer from the "memory effect". You're thinking of NiCd batteries.

They do. It is just not as strong and the battery manufacturers conveniently omit it. Also Li-Ion
suffers from enforced capacity degradation, since, unlike NiCad, overcharging can make them explode and measuring battery capacity is tricky, so the battery controller lest you put in a little less every time you recharge.

Re:Promising

[TheRaven64]

It's not exactly a memory effect, but LiIon batteries do degrade over time. Unlike NiCd cells, their life is best preserved by keeping them about around 50% charge. You get a lot of people complaining that their batteries wear out quickly because they still think the things they learned about NiCd cells apply, so they fully discharge and recharge their LiIon cells, which is the absolute worst case for them.

Re:Promising

[ByOhTek]

Actually, theirs is similar to the NiMH batteries memory effect. They remember if the charge was too low instead of too high, and can suffer more from that.

Three things that affect LiIon life:
(1) Stored with charge too low, or high (memory effect like results)
(2) Stored to warm
(3) Over-drained (memory effect like results).

Of course, the worst culprit, which seems to drag them to their knees after not much time at all: age.

Re:Promising

[Amouth]

no i am talking Lithum batteries here.. if you have owned a laptop for more than 2 years (the same laptop and battery) you will notice it .. i use my laptop all the time.. what once was a 3 hour battery now lasts 45min .. it is annoying as hell... but what is more annoying is they claim that doesn't happen.. but it does.....

Re:Promising

[Amouth]

which still is an issue.. if the 50% mark is best.. thenwhat is the point of a 3 hour battery if using it more than 1.5 hours will damage it? might as well stuck with much cheaper NiCd where you use it for the full 1.5 hours..

Re:Promising

[ChronoReverse]

That's not memory, that's battery aging. Li-Ion batteries, instead of having memory, simply age and lost capacity over time. If your battery is warm and at anything significantly above or below ~60%, then it loses capacity at a much higher rate.

Re:Promising

[CastrTroy]

Nobody cares what it's called. It's still the same problem. With NiCads, old batteries give less running time per charge. With Li-ions, old batteries give less running time per charge. You can call it whatever you want. What we want to know is, will this new technology fix the problem with getting less power out of old batteries?

Re:Promising

[MightyYar]

If your typical usage is only 1.5 hours, then you have 2 choices. Put in a NiCd battery and drain it to zero each time or put in a Li-ion battery and use it for 1.5 hours or less... no need to drain it all the way. Every once in a while, you can use it for 2 or 3 hours and, maybe after a year it will loose 10% or so of its original capacity. It would have to get all the way to 50% capacity before it is of the same utility as the NiCd, and even then you still don't have to discharge it 100% each time.

Re:Promising

[Rei]

If I could spend 2 grand and break even in a year,

Wow, you have no familiarity with the concept of long-term investments do you? No, solar isn't an economical investment in most places. But if you expect your investments to return your expenditures in one year, I'd hate to see what your retirement plan looks like.

For anyone interested in seeing how the economics of solar power works out where they live, check out this handy-dandy photovoltaics economics calculator.

Re:Promising

[TooMuchToDo]

Li-Ion batteries degrade over time no matter what, no matter how charged you keep them. Their shelf life begins when they're manufactured and starts to degrade every calendar month.

Re:Promising

[TooMuchToDo]

Citation?

Re:Promising

[TooMuchToDo]

No. Li-Ion batteries will still degrade over time. It's because of their chemistry, and you can't do anything about it (yet, at least). This breakthrough will allow a higher power density.

Re:Promising

[Anonymous Coward]

The most efficient way of generating solar is using concentrators. Concentrators store heated steam as their 'battery'. Look at the PS10 in spain.

Re:Promising

[PermanentMarker]

Wooowzers ..10 times is quite a lot !!
If the production isn't to complex this might be "THE" spin off for electric cars.
Remember bateries where thought of to be too heavy for a long time.
Extra weight requires extra power to move it.
But know car bateries can be 10 times lighter (compared to power).
This will require less power required to move the car.

This is beginning to look verry intresting, highly green commercial speaking...

Okay electric energy isn't for free i know.
But the distribution is more easy no tanking-trucks required, just tap into the electric net.
Tanking will not be that fast, maybe.. but well most of time of a 24hour-day a car is standing still.
Perhaps for tankstations could provide services as batery switching for those long trips.

Hoping to hear more from these researches.

Re:Promising

[Amouth]

but the idea with this is that it is "soked" up - the question is will it keep it simi seprated in smaller cells that might cause this problem to be less of an impact..

make note that the orginal post i made was in responce to someone talking about this bringing Li ahead of the futrure use of capasitors - which do not have this problem in any way.. (untill they leak)

Re:Promising

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you loose capacity? Is it cooped up or something?

Re:Promising

[PitaBred]

Exactly. Batteries work by harnessing the energy of chemical reactions as electricity. When you lose capacity (only one "o" in that word, bud), a portion of the battery basically stops being able to go through the chemical changes necessary to generate the voltage.

Re:Promising

[compwizrd]

39.0 years to payback, at my current usage.

Re:Promising

[Rei]

I love what happens, though, when you plug in Nanosolar's new $0.99/watt cells into the calculator. :) They make it economically viable even in much of Alaska. Too bad all of their capacity is currently being eaten up on contract with big PV farm manufacturers. But I'm sure they're going to be scaling up as fast as they can.

Re:Promising

[gweihir]

Have a look into your average LiIon controller chip datasheet.

Standford?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this Standford you speak of?

Re:Standford?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a fake university.

Re:Standford?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the Leland Stanford Junior University. Maybe when it grows up it will be a full university.

It spells Stanford

[thib_gc]

As the URL suggests, it spells Stanford, not Standford.

Re:It spells Stanford

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll stand ford it anyway

A bit like shrapnel.

[emj]

Dangerous stuff. But seriously if this ever makes it to the production line I'm sure it will only give a slight increase atm. I mean it's not like battery tech har mad much improvement in the last 50 years...

Re:A bit like shrapnel.

[Pope]

Are you joking? Batteries have come a LONG way since WW 2! Granted, electronics have become more powerful and energy-efficient as well, but you can't deny the progress made. Look at the life of a current generation set of Lithium AAs.

Re:A bit like shrapnel.

[Anonymous Coward]

>>Are you joking? Batteries have come a LONG way since WW 2! Granted, electronics have become more powerful and energy-efficient as well, but you can't deny the progress made.

Absolutely!!! Batteries have come a LONG way since WW 2! Way back then they weren't explosive at all. Can't wait to see the progress when the WW 3 comes along. May be by then, we can get rid of all the WMDs and fight our wars with batteries!

Uh-Oh

[GroeFaZ]

So when Sony ever makes one, they don't explode, they turn into Grey Goo?

would this be a deserving patent

[wakim1618]

From the article:

Cui said that a patent application has been filed. He is considering formation of a company or an agreement with a battery manufacturer. Manufacturing the nanowire batteries would require "one or two different steps, but the process can certainly be scaled up," he added. "It's a well understood process."

I guess the two relevant question are: (i) whether such research would have been conducted in the 1st place if there were no such economic incentives, and (ii) would a patent system increase or decrease the research in the further development of this technology?

Re:would this be a deserving patent

[MightyYar]

I'd say that increasing battery performance by 10x is EXACTLY the kind of thing that the patent system is built for. This development can only be good for society, even if we have to wait a few years before it becomes generic.

Re:would this be a deserving patent

[rtrifts]

Exactly so. This is the sort of innovation that patent law was designed to promote and protect.

I hope it works - and I hope the patent holder and researchers become fabulously rich as a result. They would deserve it.

Smaller lighter batteries

[farnsaw]

Rather than tripling the life of a current battery, I can see this being used to power a laptop off a battery the size of a current cell phone battery and shrinking cell phone batteries to the size of a nickel. This will drastically reduce the size of several of our common devices such as Bluetooth headsets, cell phones, iPods (and other MP3 players), digital cameras, etc. In many such devices, the battery is still the single largest and heaviest component and being able to shrink this by a factor of 3-5 will drastically affect the size and weight of them.

Re:Smaller lighter batteries

[geekoid]

don't you mean they can count TO 1023 on their hands?

It's 1024 numbers, but it only goes to 1023

1111111111 = 1023

Re:Smaller lighter batteries

[Xentor]

Careful, or he'll give ya the 132 salute.

Re:Smaller lighter batteries

[farnsaw]

Yes, but they are aware of the overflow / wraparound when it happens, therefore they can count to 1024.

Re:Smaller lighter batteries

[InvalidError]

Rather than tripling the life of a current battery, I can see this being used to power a laptop off a battery the size of a current cell phone battery and shrinking cell phone batteries to the size of a nickel. This will drastically reduce the size of several of our common devices such as Bluetooth headsets, cell phones, iPods (and other MP3 players), digital cameras, etc.

Great, more unworkably small displays, keypads and other tactile/visual HIDs.

I think many of those devices have already reached the limit where size is impeding usability and ruggedness. I personally cannot stand squinting at video on sub-3" LCDs and hate my current cell phone's ~1" wide keypad.

Re:Smaller lighter batteries

[Stormcrow309]

Actually with some thought, a human can count to over 2 million on their hands. Ever considered about rotating your hand by 180 degrees as part of your numbering system? It is commonly done in american sign language to count to 100 on one hand. Using three positions per hand, you can count to over 1.2 times 10 to the 27th power. Of course, trying to remember hand positions in such a system would likely be difficult.

Re:Smaller lighter batteries

[grumpyman]

With this technology applies on cell phone, my thumb will be able to press button 1 to 9 and */0/# all at once instead of 1/2/4/5.

Re:Smaller lighter batteries

[nani popoki]

Your tag-line is wrong on several levels. Non-mutilated, non-mutant humans have eight fingers. 11111111b = 255 Using the thumbs as well, 1111111111b = 1023.

Re:Smaller lighter batteries

[r_jensen11]

This will drastically reduce the size of several of our common devices such as Bluetooth headsets, cell phones, iPods (and other MP3 players), digital cameras, etc. How small, exactly, are you and your hands? Or, perhaps a better question to ask is, how large is your battery with respect to your phone? I have a small phone (Nokia 3220). The phone's dimensions are 104 x 44 x 18.8 mm, and the battery is maybe 1/8 of its size, if that large. My broken phone (Sony Ericsson T630i), is 102 x 43 x 17 mm. Granted, this phone's battery was proportionally larger than the one in my Nokia, but still, I couldn't imagine the thing much smaller. The only way you could shrink it is on the Z dimension, perhaps from 17mm down to 15. But you still need something to hold on to.

Myself, I don't believe I could, let alone want to, regularly handle a phone that is much smaller than my 3220. And I can't imagine the public accepting a Zoolander phone

Re:Smaller lighter batteries

[teslatug]

I can just see those kinds of phones being popular.

Re:Smaller lighter batteries

[eharvill]

Great, more unworkably small displays, keypads and other tactile/visual HIDs

Or, keep the device sizes the same, reduce the battery size and add more functionality/technology/features/etc in said device.

Shrink a battery in a laptop and you can have enough extra room to have an additional 2-3 hard drives if one wanted.

Re:Smaller lighter batteries

[sexconker]

Lies.
You fail to realize that when you rotate your hand, all fingers rotate together.

Re:Smaller lighter batteries

[dex22]

I note this salute works on both big-endian and little-endian systems without conversion. Sweet. :)

Re:Smaller lighter batteries

[torkus]

'132 salute'

Another wonderful techie thing to further confuse people and convince them that we're not exactly human after all.

I love the dumb stares when i mention pebcak or id-10-t

Re:Smaller lighter batteries

[PitaBred]

Better yet, halve the battery size, and you get both another hard drive AND longer running life. Everyone wins!

Re:Smaller lighter batteries

[InvalidError]

Shrink a battery in a laptop and you can have enough extra room to have an additional 2-3 hard drives if one wanted.

I'd rather shed about a pound in overall weight and 1/4" in overall thickness yet still have triple the Wh capacity than have a bunch of extra unused internal peripheral bays wasting space, adding structural weak points and collecting dust puppies. Unlike cell phones and media players, there is still a fair amount of thickness and weight optimization left to do in current laptop designs where surface area is dictated by screen size.

When I need extra HDD space on the go, I lug around an external 2.5" or 3.5" USB drive. Otherwise, I do not want to bother with the unnecessary extra weight, heat, battery drain and bulkier machine.

Re:Smaller lighter batteries

[eharvill]

I definitely agree. I was just stating another option (of many available) of what to do with the extra space instead of shrinking existing devices.

Heck, maybe they could even integrate the AC adapter into the laptop and have one less bulky item to worry about.

Re:Smaller lighter batteries

[InvalidError]

Heck, maybe they could even integrate the AC adapter into the laptop and have one less bulky item to worry about.

My old Toshiba CDT430 has a built-in power supply and I must say it has been far less troublesome than my newer Compaq laptop's external brick with its god-damned barrel power connector - the slightest vibration is sometimes enough to end up on battery power... and with my current battery dead (I am currently meditating on new laptop VS new battery VS new desktop), it means lights out without warning. If I could figure out how to disassemble the battery pack without destroying it, I would try an NiMH conversion.

The main problem with integrated power supplies is they "waste" at least one cubic inch for line input caps, another cubic inch for line conditioning/PFC and output filters, another cubic inch for the main transformer and one more cubic inch for active devices with their heatsinks... that's about four cubic inches for a basic 100W universal single-rail AC-DC converter. Add the 20 minutes fast-charge option and we need another two cubic inches for beefier PFC, input filters, power transformer and heatsinks.

As much as I hate laptop power bricks and their cheap barrel connectors, they are here to stay - even more so if/once 10+h high-cycle-count battery life becomes standard: enough battery capacity to last through typical work days means no need to carry the 1lb brick and absolutely no desire to be stuck with a 1/2lb integrated charger all day long for over 90% of people.

Re:Smaller lighter batteries

[jokkebk]

Careful, or he'll give ya the 132 salute.

This is the stuff I read Slashdot for. :)

Now, if I only could remember what was the article we were discussing about..

Thickness of paper?

[Radon360]

Making the assumption that the reference for comparison is standard 20lb bond paper, a sheet is approximately 0.0038 inches thick. So, we're talking 0.0038 mils once the 1/1000th thickness factor is added.

Anyone care to convert this into lengths of football fields or Empire State Building height units? <grin>

Re:Thickness of paper?

[Anonymous Coward]

football field = 100 yards = 3600 inches
paper = 1/1000000 football fields (approx)
it is about a billionth of football field length.

btw it is approximately 100 nm, almost as thin as wires on CPUs a few years ago.

Re:Thickness of paper?

[1000101]

Stack up 4,648,421,052 of these bad boys and you'll have a nano wire Empire State building. Conversely, the length of these are approximately 2.15x10^-7 Empire State Building's long*.

*including tower

Yes, Nanowires and also my special tech.

[thomasdz]

I've created a new invention that is much better than these "nanowires" and am in the process of patenting it. I call it an "on/off" button. When my special "on/off" button is moved to the "off" position, laptop batteries can last for weeks and weeks. I've even got some reports of a battery lasting over a year with my special "turnitoff" technology.

I'm going to make millions!
TDz.

Re:Yes, Nanowires and also my special tech.

[Svet-Am]

obviously, you're unaware of the natural leakage of rechargeable batteries. even in the "off" position, most rechargeable batteries will discharge in a matter of weeks on the upper end.

Re:Yes, Nanowires and also my special tech.

[thomasdz]

"obviously"? No, I've powered up laptops that have been sitting in a cabinet for over a year. Yeah, they didn't last very long (half an hour) until I had to plug them back in, but rechargables last way more that a "matter of weeks"
Maybe you've got bad product?

Re:Yes, Nanowires and also my special tech.

[calebt3]

Early reports indicate that devices that have these batteries will also incorporate your technology as well, increasing battery lifespan a hundred-fold.

patent

[ageforce_]

why does the assistant professor get the patent?
I would say he was employed by Stanford. So Stanford should receive the patent. If his research-money was provided by a public institution (some sort of grant), then either the research should be public (patent-free), or the patent should be somehow associated to the country.
I don't see why he gets to profit from the discovery. (After all he was payed to do that. It would have been bad, if he hadn't found anything.)

Re:patent

[Anonymous Coward]

You invent something like this (or anything for that matter), then see if you are still of the mindset that people shouldn't own their own work. Enough of this "Information wants to be free" nonsense.

Re:patent

[geekoid]

Not to say your point is wrong, but as an FYI:

Getting a patent is a huge motivator for research professors. Mostly for academic reasons. I do agree with you in principle however: He should be on the patent, but the patent should be public domain.

Re:patent

[Dahamma]

Universities have patent licensing programs for this, and often support their facultry or students in founding companies based on their research.

I'm sure Stanford has made a killing by licensing to or investing in companies. Here's a list of their startup investments - not necessarily patent related, but I'm sure many were founded by Stanford professors or alumni with patents licensed back from the university...

http://otl.stanford.edu/about/resources/equity.html

They probably made over a billion on Google alone...

Re:patent

[cmaxx]

Bad if he hadn't found anything, yes, but if he'd found 50,000 ways that didn't work, that would've been fine. Seriously. Even better if he'd published a report of some kind about all the things that hadn't worked and why.

As for why he gets the patent, well, inventors are named on patents, that's pretty much how it works, but the rights to exploit the patent are probably more complex, and possibly equitable, depending on all the factors cited.

Re:patent

[xebra]

Obviously you never read any of your employment contracts :). I have a relative with a number of patents for steps used to refine petroleum. Obviously he's not a billionaire just because the technologies in his patents are used during the processing of a quarter billion gallons of oil each day!

"The Employee hereby assigns and transfers to the Company without further consideration his entire right, title and interest in and to all Inventions developed while in the employ of the Company."

Sign on the dotted line or you're not hired! The article mentions the professor may start a company to exploit his discovery. To do so, he will have to license the technology from Stanford, even though the patent is in his name!

Re:patent

[Atario]

In that case, you would think it would be much cheaper than it is to attend there...

Re:patent

[SEE]

Stanford has a $17 billion endowment, or $2.5 million per undergrad enrolled. They could go tuition-free for undergraduate education if they wanted to; the thirty-odd thousand nominal tuition (especially university-supplied financial aid is discounted) is a relatively small fraction of the budget compared to endowment returns and federal grants, and could be covered with minimal cutbacks. Tuition at Stanford is high because the university administration wants it to be high.

Re:patent

[Atario]

Tuition at Stanford is high because the university administration wants it to be high.

Bingo. So, why keep it high? To screen out the undesirables? Which is to say, the -- ugh -- poor people?

One would think they would just take the ones with the most academic/scientific/technologically-innovative potential, regardless of background. Guess it's more important to maintain the hereditary good-ol'-boy network. Oh well, huh?

Re:patent

[rozz]

why does the assistant professor get the patent?
why wouldnt he? it was His Brain that created all that stuff and He did most of the work.
or maybe u forgot that a patent is supposed to be a CreativeIdea, something that just doesnt come out of a bunch of money and devices.

I would say he was employed by Stanford. So Stanford should receive the patent. why so? that Stanford "thing" did any work? had any creative ideas?

If his research-money was provided by a public institution (some sort of grant), then either the research should be public (patent-free), or the patent should be somehow associated to the country.
fair enough ... we help you, you help us .. but that works only between People!

I don't see why he gets to profit from the discovery. (After all he was payed to do that. It would have been bad, if he hadn't found anything.) true thing u say .. but how about the reverse? ... it was that particular Person that created the whole stuff, not the money, not the instruments in Stanford's lab ... Stanford could have payed 1000x as much to someone else and get nothing ... or keep their money and labs in a safe forever and also get nothing ... therefore, they should get exactly that: nothing! .. same as true, isnt it?

the best solution is prolly a patent shared between the company and the person(s) that created it ... with the person(s) as patent Owner and the company(s) as a sort of "supporter" who only gets a share of the revenues but has no other right ... the company put some money in and gets some money out and that's all .. isnt this the most fair solution?
plus .. no company can be Owner of a patent because patents are developed by people and they are developed with Brains, not with money ... and a company has no brains whatsoever.

YES! - So my Tesla will go 2450 miles per charge!

[non-sequitur]

It's good news, since there's no charging stations along my commute across the country.....

Assuming this in't hype and

[geekoid]

'five years away', what about the automobile? It seems that would be the money shot of this technology.

Right now the biggest reason for not buying an electric car is range. If my car that gets 120 miles on a charge now gets 1200 miles, I can not travel cross country in it and only need to charge at night.
Or bette, they can make bigger cars that get 600 mile range. That seems to me to be the 'tipping point' for acceptance.

We can discuss how much people 'need' but the fact is people feel they need more, and that's the choke point.

Re:Assuming this in't hype and

[thomasdz]

Or bette, they can make bigger cars that get 600 mile range. That seems to me to be the 'tipping point' for acceptance

My current car gets 700km to a tank of gas...so I have to visit a station every 500 miles or so...so yeah the "tipping point" for me would be between 450 and 600 miles on a single charge... I visit somewhere where I either fill up with gas or fill up with electrons... I don't care either way

Re:Assuming this in't hype and

[maroberts]

Whilst I agree with your comment. I have a feeling that expense may be the limiting factor here. I suspect these will cost more than the current small lithium batteries, so imagining a 'car battery' of these is a non-starter.

Re:Assuming this in't hype and

[mwilliamson]

If this works out, and costs come down with scale, then this is the only single logical choice for government to subsidize instead of wasting our tax money on subsidizing corn-based ethanol. Before someone goes off on how electric cars only move the pollution around, I call bullshit. It's obvious it moves some of it around, but large power plants even with their lossy distribution system being used to charge lossy batteries for electric cars are still orders of magnitude more efficient than the small prime movers under most hoods. If you don't believe me, price it out for yourself. The big guys don't loose money.

Re:Assuming this in't hype and

[TheRaven64]

Depending on where you live, charging can be more convenient than buying more petrol. My parents, for example, both live in small villages a few miles outside a town. They drive in to work, and have to drive out of their way slightly to visit a petrol station that is reasonably priced. For them, plugging in the car overnight would be more convenient. My father often has to drive to London and back, which is around a 300 mile round trip. An electric car with a 350 mile range and an overnight charging facility would make this feasible.

There are a lot of people who never (or rarely) need to drive anything like the maximum range of their current cars.

Re:Assuming this in't hype and

[geekoid]

Maybe.
For the sake of argument, lets say 1 charge = 1 tank of gas for the same vehicle.

How much more money would you pay for the vehicle to never put gas in it?

I fill up every two weeks for 30 bucks. call it 60 bucks a month.(yeah, I know 4.33 weeks in a month.)
If I pay 10 cents a kilowatt I would need a car that uses no more then 300Kw a month to break even.
The Telsa Roadster goes 245 miles on 54Kw.
I probably drive 300 miles every two weeks.
So I would save money on energy.

My point here is that apparently I need more information. ;)

However; The Tesla would cost me about 8 bucks to drive every two weeks. Now if I can only get the upfront cost.

Re:Assuming this in't hype and

[ivan256]

The problem is that the high initial investment required in purchasing a vehicle means that "rarely" is frequently enough for some (if not most) people to consider long recharge times to be a deal breaker. They simply can't afford to have a separate vehicle (or to rent one) simply for those "rare" occasions.

Recharge Cycles

[coolmoose25]

I skimmed TFA but didn't see anything that discussed charge/discharge cycles... It might be a wonderful technology, but if it can't be cycled much, then it wouldn't be of much use...

Re:Recharge Cycles

[Androclese]

From an article listed below this post, it talks about only having done 10 cycles so far. Borrowed Link So there is still work to do, but the science is promising.

Re:Recharge Cycles

[BlackTachyon29]

From TFA

This expand/shrink cycle typically causes the silicon (often in the form of particles or a thin film) to pulverize, degrading the performance of the battery. and

The nanowires inflate four times their normal size as they soak up lithium. But, unlike other silicon shapes, they do not fracture. This implies that this design can not only pack more energy into the volume but may not have the charge/discharge life cycles that normal lithium batteries have because of said fracturing.

Buy lithium

[Anonymous Coward]

or buy shares in a company that mines lithium. If this discovery does what it promises to do, the demand for lithium will go through the roof.

4277mA hours per gram

[TopSpin]

A short but more technical story found here.

Re:4277mA hours per gram

[corychristison]

That's pretty good...

The most I have seen in a AA battery is 2650 (although this is NiMH), so in comparison: 1 AA battery is roughly 15-20 grams (estimated).

15 x 4277 = 64155mAh
20 x 4277 = 85540mAh

Re:4277mA hours per gram

[MozeeToby]

Maybe this is a stupid question but what does "expanded by 400%" mean? Does that mean 4x or 5x? After all, if you say that it expanded by 100% that would imply 2x so extrapolating... It's just horribly vague.

Re:4277mA hours per gram

[WalksOnDirt]

So they've demonstrated 10 charge/discharge cycles? Well, you have to start somewhere, but that shows how early this news is in the possible development of a commercial product. Something to keep an eye on, though.

Re:4277mA hours per gram

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article:

'The most appealing result is obviously the high cycling capacity that these materials are able to deliver,' said one leading expert on lithium battery anodes, who asked not to be named. 'However, the test is limited to only 10 cycles and this is far too few to determine the industrial impact of the electrode. Also, the rate of the cycling test is very low and thus the power capability, another important practical requisite, has not been ascertained.' These were exactly my concerns. Woudl you buy a Rechargable battery if it can only be recharged 10 times? Perhaps their testing isn't finished, but certainly if this is going to be used in Electric Vehicles you need to have 300 or more full charges out of a battery (unless it is really cheap and environmentally friendly). Also as noted by a previous post since the area is increased, it should charge / discharge quickly, but again the tests do not show this, either they have not tested its power density (rather than energy density), or it is not good, and therefore probably not good for high power devices such as Electric Vehicles.

Re:4277mA hours per gram

[Bloater]

Assuming the same price per litre as current Li-Ion (a big assumption) you would need about 200 charge/discharge cycles to match the tesla roadster's current batteries on price per mile, I think.

Any work on the flip side?

[iamacat]

It's a shame that enough power to cause a massive explosion can only power a device that, for the most part, just displays text for 3 hours. We really need to rethink what a computer does when someone reads e-mail or browses the web. With an e-paper display, processor, disk and a WiFi radio should just briefly power themselves on when the user goes to a new URL and then completely shut down, yielding weeks of typical use on a single charge. Audio and video playback can be achieved by a dedicated chip and achieve playback times of the latest iPods. If users also want to use the same laptop as a desktop replacement, it can an internal PDA-like subsystem with it's own low power CPU, RAM and flash storage that synchronizes some directories with the main disk. Users can then choose weather they need high performance or long battery life at the moment and control either subsystem from the same display, keyboard and trackpad.

With clever engineering it should be possible to make a laptop exclusively used in low power mode solar powered if it's normally left out when not in use.

Re:Any work on the flip side?

[Anonymous Coward]

With clever engineering it should be possible to make a laptop exclusively used in low power mode solar powered if it's normally left out when not in use.

You mean like this one?

Re:Any work on the flip side?

[purpledinoz]

But you need the power to make sure that you're running a legit copy of Windows.

Re:Any work on the flip side?

[bogie]

This is where you can squarely blame Microsoft. Both Windows and Office became more bloated with each revision. Should businessmen really need $1000.00 worth of hardware just to work on Word and Excel docs and browse the web while on the road?

Re:Any work on the flip side?

[Chirs]

e-paper is great from a power consumption point of view, but it reacts much slower than LCD when the display changes. Because of this, it would make an awful laptop display.

Re:Any work on the flip side?

[farnsaw]

Several items are coming to a head in the laptop market that will drastically reduce power usage.

1) SSD Hard Drive. The hard drive is one of the biggest power consumers in the laptop today, by changing to an SSD, this can be drastically reduced. Yes, they are more expensive and they are smaller capacity than a HD, but in addition to being less power hungry, they are also much faster, smaller, and lighter.

2) Digital Paper Displays. The back lighting required by current LCDs is very expensive to run power consumption wise. They also require power 100% of the time to maintain the image itself even though this is much less than the back light power requirements. As the digital paper displays become more commercialized, we will see them start to take over the laptop market. Digital paper does not use back lighting and does not require power to maintain the image, only to change the image. Thus drastically reducing the amount of power required for the display.

3) Wireless network adapter. There are several changes coming in the Wireless world in the near future that will reduce the power requirements of wireless networking. As 802.11n moves from draft to production standards and the equipment become inter operable, we will see more usage of the N mode networking which will allow for most network cards to run at lower power for the same connectivity we see today. WiMax and other similar technologies will also bring lower power consumption for wireless networking.

4) Sub 40nm chips. As we shrink circuits smaller and smaller, we are finding that they, in general, require less power to operate. In addition, new materials, such as the new High-k materials, are required to allow circuits to operate correctly at this smaller scale and these new materials are also introducing power savings. As RAM, CPU, and main chipset chips are moved to the smaller die size we will find they use less and less power.

5) Non-Volatile MRAM. Another power consumer is main memory. Even if the system is idle, RAM requires power just to maintain the data stored in it. New technologies are just coming to fruition that will create RAM that does not require power constantly but will be just as fast as current RAM offerings and not have the life span problems that Flash RAM has.

Combine all of these changes with the fact that we may see Li-Ion batteries that have 3-5 times the capacity of today's Li-Ion batteries on a size to size or weight to weight ratio, I expect that over the next 5 years we will see personal electronic devices shrink to down to the point where they are practically non-existent

Re:Any work on the flip side?

[fedtmule]

Your sig:

"Computer Scientists can count to 1024 on their fingers" (non-mutant, non-mutilatated, human computer scientists)

unless you value a hand full of zero-fingers as one, then that would be 1023. And honestly what self-respecting computer scientists would count from anything but zero.

Re:Any work on the flip side?

[fprintf]

http://www.laptop.org/en/laptop/hardware/highlights.shtml describes the power management/consumption pretty well. Very low power requirements compared with current laptops.

Re:Any work on the flip side?

[zsouthboy]

By all means, please start a company RIGHT now, and make one. I'll buy four. Seriously.

It's not as easy to build as saying "OMG EVRTHNG SHUD SHUT DOWN LOL"

Re:Any work on the flip side?

[fprintf]

Huh? Why?

The initial focus of laptops was portability so that you can do work, email or surfing the internet. All low power applications and ones where a high refresh rate is not a problem. I'd say that epaper would not make an awful laptop display for these purposes - at least once the technology is mature.

If you want to game or program & compile while on a laptop then you should accept the higher power requirements that a suitable display will require.

Re:Any work on the flip side?

[Junior J. Junior III]

OK, but how do you keep the silicon cool while the laptop is soaking up solar energy? Most manuals I've read recommend keeping laptops out of direct sunlight, and modern laptop processors already push the limits of what you can cool reasonably on air over a copper heat sink as it is. Add thermal load from direct sunlight and you're probably asking for thermal shutdown in a few minutes.

Re:Any work on the flip side?

[SuiteSisterMary]

Hmmm. Two closed fists = 0. Two open hands with all fingers pressed together, Judo Chop! style, = 1024. Fingers elevated in the counting style work as expected.

Please note that you need to specfy if you're using signed or unsigned hands; if signed, palm-out is negative, palm-in is positive. If unsigned, palm-out picks up where palm-in leaves off.

If you want to get slightly more complicated, you can have left-palm-in, right-palm-out and left-palm-out, right-palm-in to tack another couple of bits onto your maximum.

Re:Any work on the flip side?

[swillden]

Most manuals I've read recommend keeping laptops out of direct sunlight, and modern laptop processors already push the limits of what you can cool reasonably on air over a copper heat sink as it is. Add thermal load from direct sunlight and you're probably asking for thermal shutdown in a few minutes.

One consequence of the XO laptop's very low power consumption is that it also generates very little heat.

Re:Any work on the flip side?

[iamacat]

If you have more experience in designing chips and building boards than me, do feel free to explain why EVRTHNG CNT SHUT DOWN. I noticed that my notebook uses very little power when I turn it off.

Re:Any work on the flip side?

[dylan_-]

If you want to get slightly more complicated, you can have left-palm-in, right-palm-out and left-palm-out, right-palm-in to tack another couple of bits onto your maximum.

Actually, if you're going to do that, why not use palm-in (on both hands) to represent 2^11 up and palm-out to represent 2^10 down.

So, to get 2083 for example, you'd show second finger on left hand, all closed on right hand, with palm-in, followed by fifth and third finger on left hand and first finger on right hand, with palm-out. (Obviously I'm counting thumb as finger one).

Anyway, this lets you count to 2^20-1 or 1,048,575

Not quite

[jcorno]

Ten times is a big exaggeration. Silicon has 10 times the specific capacity of carbon, which is the most commonly used electrode material, but that's just one piece of the battery. They're ignoring the current collector, insertion compound, electrode separator, packaging, and control electronics. It's still an improvement, but nowhere near 10X.

Either way, I have a hard time believing these things have a stable capacity after cycling. Fracturing is not the only problem in silicon electrodes. As the lithium is released, the swollen silicon structures tend to fuse to neighboring structures. Looking at the SEM images included in the article, it seems pretty unlikely that the fibers wouldn't eventually fuse into one solid mass and completely lose capacity.

Re:Not quite

[Jack Malmostoso]

Plus, TFA states that:

The electrical storage capacity of a Li-ion battery is limited by how much lithium can be held in the battery's anode, which is typically made of carbon.

which is plain wrong. The cathode materials have a capacity of roughly 150mAh/g, while graphite is at 370. So the real revolution would be finding a cathodic material that would deliver at least 250mAh/g.
And maybe an electrolyte that does not decompose above 4.3V, but that's another story.

"Amount" of electricity????

[gweihir]

Seems education is geting worse and worse. That would be either "amount of energy" or "capacity at the same voltage". And it would be "store" not "procuce". Incompetents.

Re:"Amount" of electricity????

[geekoid]

Yeah that's what I thought: What a bunch of incompetents, Stanford professors changing the way batteries works. Practically morons~

Oh, since th wire absorb the lithium, Amount is correct.Oh, and amount of electricity is, in fact, correct.

Electricity refers to electromotive force. See the word force in that sentence? That's why 'amount' is correct.

In introduction EE course will teach you that.

Re:"Amount" of electricity????

[Chirs]

One could reasonably interpret "amount of electricity" as "number of Coulombs stored in a battery of the same size".

I do agree that it stores rather than produces though.

Re:"Amount" of electricity????

[XSpud]

Hmm, I'm not sure about education getting worse - when I studied electrochemical reactions 20 years ago, batteries did indeed produce electricity (or more accurately, electrical energy) albeit from stored chemical energy and a battery stores electricity no more than a lump of coal stores heat or a reservoir stores kinetic energy in a hydroelectric plant. To store electrity (electric charge) you'd need to use a capacitor.

Critical questions of how

[Sitnalta]

1) How much will they cost
2) How long does it take to charge
3) How many charges can you get in its lifetime.

If any one of those is a major deficiency, the technology will be worthless. Since they didn't immediately bring up use in electric cars, I'm guessing there's currently a fatal flaw that applies to one of those questions.

My money is still on ultra-capacitors.

Re:Critical questions of how

[quickpick]

1) How much will they cost
If you have to ask you can't afford it.
2) How long does it take to charge
Not too long, plug it in and wait for the amber light to turn green.
3) How many charges can you get in its lifetime.
If its made by Apple you can charge it as many times as you want, but replacing it will cost about 82% of the original cost of the full price of the original device you bought it for UNLESS you buy an Apple Care Plan for 73% of the full price of the original device you bought it for.

If any one of those is a major deficiency, the technology will be worthless. Since they didn't immediately bring up use in electric cars, I'm guessing there's currently a fatal flaw that applies to one of those questions. They will ALL be deficient to one person or another...therefore the technology will be worthless in some aspect by someone. Why is it that people only want to use it in electric cars? I'm sure all the single and lonely women wouldn't mind having a device that doesn't quit on them before they're TRULY satisfied...which will never happen because women are never satisfied. Thats why its called a ball and chain.

My money is still on ultra-capacitors.
You fool. My money is in Gold because the Fiat System will fail at some point and you can't buy food with ultra-capacitors...

Re:Critical questions of how

[ThePhin]

1) How much will they cost
2) How long does it take to charge
3) How many charges can you get in its lifetime.

And one more:

4) What is the self-discharge rate?

Most sites I checked say it is a function of cell chemistry and temperature, but this is also a significant change in geometry, so I'd still want to see 'shelf-life' measured.

Wrong.

[TheMeuge]

obviously, you're unaware of the natural leakage of rechargeable batteries. even in the "off" position, most rechargeable batteries will discharge in a matter of weeks on the upper end.

That's highly incorrect. Lithium ion batteries have a self-discharge rate of about 5% per month. However, while the battery is connected to a power supply, some energy is always consumed, just like the way desktop PSUs consume power when the computer is off, but when the PSU cutoff switch is not switched off. That's why laptops will not stay charged for months when unused. Take the battery OUT of the laptop, and you will be able to power it on a year after you turn it off.

Low-self-discharge (LSD) NiMH cells (such as Sanyo Eneloop) have discharge rates that are even lower... up to as little as 20% per year.

Re:Your Sig

[imgumbydamnit]

Um, 1023 actually (unless you are also crossing them.)

The Hard Part...Commercialization

[BoRegardless]

As a guess based on my experience, the actual implementation of a design, with prototyping, testing for failure modes, integral monitoring, sensors and such, I will bet that another 1-2 dozen patents will be filed and $10s of millions will be spent getting or trying to get the "pre-production" version over a 3-5 year time frame. If they leverage by working with an existing battery manufacturer, maybe they get it to 2-3 years.

Given that the initial results suggest an energy density increase of an order of magnitude, I suspect VCs are already crawling into Palo Alto & up to Standford.

What happens between the "experiment" where a 10/1 advantage is produced, to the final produceable & safe product, it is not uncommon to see 10/1 advantages slip to 5/1.

Other notes in this thread have joked at 10 times the explosive power, which battery manufacturers have worked out in existing batteries, but this one will offer BIGGER challenges. I wouldn't know how to calculate the "explosive power" of the end design if safeties failed, but this will be critical.

Any serious damage which might cause a catastrophic short would cause some companies to NOT accept these batteries, like airlines for instance. My pure guess is that physical damage, in say an automobile accident, or similar "mashing", will make the design of safety features be what takes the most time and effort.

Re:The Hard Part...Commercialization

[geekoid]

"...Palo Alto & up to Standford."

After which they will realize they where lost and find their way to Stanford. ;)

Because of the Bayh-Dole act

[Animats]

Because of the Bayh-Dole Act, which commercialized federally-funded research.

Re:Because of the Bayh-Dole act

[ageforce_]

According to the wiki page only the institution receives the patent. (It must however share royalties with the inventor.)
I just skimmed over the article, so maybe I missed something, though.

Hundreds of pages?

[zippthorne]

From the article:

That's the first problem. Printers routinely report that they are low on ink even when they aren't, and in some cases there are still hundreds of pages worth of ink left.

Although I find it despicable that printers might under-report their ink capacity (though I always though it was a "buy ink" warning rather than a "put new ink in" warning. An important distinction, as you want to have fresh ink handy *before* you actually run out), I find it very difficult to believe that even the most unethical manufacture would under-report when hundreds of pages remain on a product that is only designed to handle circa 200 pages to begin with.

Now I have noticed, on a family member's HP, that it is printing color even when a page is pure black text. This seems particularly wasteful to me, and when I looked at it, I couldn't figure out if it was a setting, or just fantastically poor design decisions.

Re:Hundreds of pages?

[vidarh]

Many color printers will either make you choose between inserting a color cartridge or a black cartridge and will mix the colors to get black if you have the color cartridge in, or they will have space for both and again mix the colors if you don't have a black cartridge fitted. Yeah, it's wasteful, and expensive.

Re:Hundreds of pages?

[elFarto the 2nd]

Now I have noticed, on a family member's HP, that it is printing color even when a page is pure black text. This seems particularly wasteful to me, and when I looked at it, I couldn't figure out if it was a setting, or just fantastically poor design decisions.

That'll be the tracking dots:

Clicky!

Re:Hundreds of pages?

[GreggBz]

Whoa, big Deja Vu. For a second I thought it was 10AM EST again.

Re:Uh, maybe 1023?

[Nom du Keyboard]

"Computer Scientists can count to 1024 on their fingers" (non-mutant, non-mutilatated, human computer scientists)

Uh, shouldn't that be count to 1023?

Energy/volume constant?

[__aailob1448]

Technically, grenades, batteries and gas tanks are all high-density energy containers. They tend to be hazardous (flammable, explosive, radioactive, etc.) and more powerful batteries will indeed be more dangerous batteries unless similarly significant progress is made in securing them.

I think we're going to see quite a few more stories about battery recalls and killer cellphones.

Electric car revolution?

[Vthornheart]

Could this have a positive effect on the search for a longer lasting electric car?
I don't know what the odds are that this new tech could be used in electric car batteries... but if it provided a comparable "usage" boost (2 hours vs. 20 hours for laptops = 10-fold increase)
The old Volt got ~100 miles on a charge... if a similar increase was had due to this technology, it'd make a car like the Volt get 1000 miles to a charge... which would be amazing. I'm just speculating, mind you.

Before we get too excited, BOGUS?

[k2backhoe]

To actually hold 5 to 10 times more energy, you must have 5 to 10 times as much active lithium (that is, Li which is available to partake in the charge/discharge chemical reaction cycle). You still get the same number of electrons from each Li atom, at the same potential. This implies that existing Li batteries have 20% of their volume (or mass, depending on our definition of energy density) containing active Li. I thought that the utilization factor was currently higher than that. Anyone knowledgeable on battery chemistry and construction care to comment?

It's a shame...

[thanksforthecrabs]

that batteries can't be powered by the bio-lard from the 800 million people sitting behind them.

On the topic of nanoenergy...

[__aahurc460]

Hmm, well as least this'll help me wait for the advent of a nanofusion battery. :P

Problem already solved

[PPH]

As seen in The Matrix.

Re:Problem already solved

[geekoid]

There a way to get energy from bad acting? Are energy problems ARE solved.

Almost

[JediTrainer]

The 'tipping point', IMO, is if you could get 300-400 miles out of it (enough for a 2-way commute or a very decent drive), and recharge it quickly (10 minutes or less) for longer road trips.

That's the harder part, I would think. As a commuter vehicle, I would LOVE to be able to trickle-charge a car in my garage at night and never have to visit a fuel station except on longer road trips, though.

Re:Almost

[mr_mischief]

There's another tipping point, though. If you and everyone else nearly never needed the charging stations, they'd be rare and expensive. It's true to a point that lower demand lowers prices, but with low demand there's low margin, so there will be low supply.

Re:Almost

[Anonymous Coward]

You won't be "trickle" charging this kind of power overnight.

Who's the Boom King?

[iPaqMan]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JT5AQIlmM0I

I suppose then...

[Uteck]

This will probably slow down funding and development on fuel-cells.

Cars!

[Mirar]

Laptops? You need to think about cars... The liquid energy powered car is last century. It's time for battery powered cars, and this could change the premises for that!

Re:Cars!

[geekoid]

Electric cars were 2 centuries ago:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Jamais_Contente

barely.

Re:Cars!

[Anonymous Coward]

You are absolutely correct. We need to be thinking about the application of this tech to automobiles.
How the idiot /. reviewier could rate that Cars! post a "1" i have no idea.
Would have to have his head up somethng to not recognize the fit with our greeenhouse problem.

Bloody hyped up news. Exciting but not quite

[dinther]

Have a read of this: http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2007/1217/2 At the bottom of the article is states that although progress has been made for the anode, the cathode has not been improved. They say that real battery capacity gain is achieved my making the anode smaller and increase the size of the cathode. There are no numbers but I suggest that capacity increase probably is more in the order of 1.4 times and not 10 times as suggested. Dammit. I wanted to believe this news so badly.

I'm amped just reading this...

[Akardam]

The current limitation is that you cannot releaste the energy in a short burst.
Yes, precisely!

Re:I'm amped just reading this...

[gweihir]

Ha, somebody caught it!

Poor design decision?

[wurp]

They just have different design goals than you do.

Commercialization ETA?

[ianbnet]

I found it a bit worrying that they didn't specifically give a date range to commercialize this. Patents can take a while, and although the article mentioned potential partnerships and the ability to scale up, I would have liked more of the usual hype saying "by 2010, your Wii controller will run for 2 years on a single set of batteries!"

And more seriously, some dates lend more credibility to the tech.

Crossing fingers :)

Power Theft

[N8F8]

As energy prices increase along with battery capacity and fast chargers, I imagine we'll see a return of energy theft.

On that note...

[scarboni888]

where ARE my *rechargable* lithium AA, AAA, C, D, & 9 volt batteries? NiMH is an improvement over NiCD but given all the rechargable Li-ION & Li-Polymer batteries in cell phones, laptops, etc... what is the deal?

**reaches for tin foil hat**

Re:On that note...

[jayteedee]

The cell voltages for NiCd, NiMh, and Alkaline are APPROXIMATELY 1.2, 1.2, 1.5 volts respectively. The cell voltage for Li is about 3 volts, so AAA, AA, C, and D's are out of the question without a DC/DC converter or voltage regulator on the battery to limit the voltage to about 1.6 volts or less. They could make a 9V battery, but they are going the way of the Dodo. Even C's and D's are dying. Some of the newer rechargeable C and D cells are actually AA battery inside a C or D casing (check out the capacities some time at your local favorite store, and check the weight of the package). They still do make full C and D rechargeable cells, but they are not as readily available in box stores.

Re:On that note...

[russotto]

I have a couple of rechargable lithium AAs on my desk. The catch is that AA is a size, not a full cell specification. So this lithium AA has the standard lithium-cobalt cell voltage of 3.7 volts. Which is one reason you don't see loose lithium rechargable cells for consumer devices.

Re:On that note...

[scarboni888]

So you're saying that the disposable lithium AA's (which are used to replace alkalines) are a different animal than rechargable Li-ion or Li_polymer technology?

I guess that would make a difference, then. I was just seeing disposable lithium ion AA's & rechargable li-ion cell phone batteries & wondering why there wasn't both. Not knowing the technologies involved I suppose is the limiting factor in my reasoning.

Re:On that note...

[FirstOne]

"They could make a 9V battery, but they are going the way of the Dodo. "

Rechargeable 9V lithium ion batteries are available via mail order.

Re:On that note...

[Agripa]

There are a number of lithium based chemistries which can be used to provide 1.5 volts in either primary or secondary applications. Energizer primary 1.5 volt lithium cells use lithium iron disulfide. They have a little more then twice the energy density of alkaline in high current applications and no advantage at low currents.

Whatever

[CrackPipePls]

Great news, until big oil steps in and force them to cost 40 times more to postpone electric cars popularity

The problem

[emj]

The thing is Gasoline will eventually run out.

Still can't do it, I'm afraid.

[hacksoncode]

It's still on the right path, even if LiIon batteries are 99.9% efficient... A 10 hour charge time for 900MJ is 100A at 250V, which is at least theoretically possible...

However, economical AC/DC power converters are *nowhere* near that efficient, and *would* definitely melt. And even the economical converters are *nowhere* near cheap enough at this power level to have in everyone's homes. So unless you're going to wire high voltage DC power to everyone's home (a very challenging proposition from a distribution standpoint, BTW, not to mention the cost), forget home recharging the whole battery in any reasonable time.

The notion that service stations will just install "fat pipes" to recharge cars is even more ludicrous. In order to be even close to competitive with gasoline, they'd have to recharge a car fully in 10 minutes or less (preferably 5). The problem isn't necessarily getting the power, though that *is* a problem (it's 1.5 megawatts, preferably 3MW, and you'd need to be able to charge at least 5 cars in parallel to be practical). It's the safety considerations. Normal humans simply can't interact with megawatts of power no matter what we do to try to make it safer. Even just switching that much power is a gargantuan problem.

That doesn't necessarily doom the idea of electric cars, but what it does mean is that that *only* practical method for refilling your electric car is battery pack exchange at refueling stations (presumably robotic since you'd need a forklift).

A plugin series hybrid that or a limited range vehicle you only ever recharge to recoup the power for a relatively short commute is feasible as well, and probably a lot more likely.

Re:Still can't do it, I'm afraid.

[Rei]

Let's back up a couple posts: as mentioned, the generally accepted idea is that you either A) slow charge overnight, B) use a home charger that has its own batteries that are slow charged but discharge all at once, or C) charge at a gas station which has all of the necessary infrastructure.

A) No problem. You're slow charging.
B) You're using a home charger, which has it's own li-ion batteries and so is having no more heat from discharge than your car's batteries are getting from charging.
C) The gasoline station can easily afford the bulk and capital for a fast converter with sufficient cooling. Certainly seems cheaper than the overhead of dealing with gasoline.

In short, where's the problem?

As for the service stations themselves, gasoline isn't exactly safe either. Picture what you're doing when you fill a tank: you're dumping huge amounts of chemical energy through air, i.e., encouraging a fuel-air vapor mix, from hoses connected to monstrous tanks full of the stuff. With potential sources of ignition all over the place. Yet, accidents are rare. Why? Because it's designed safely. And that's what matters: a safe design. Your vaccum cleaner cord can kill you, too, but I doubt you've decided to forgo that, either. Yet, you can go a heck of a lot safer than a vaccum cord. Say, cords that have a conductive sheath with a small amount of current flowing through it that will break the primary charging circuit if damaged, sensors that don't start current flow until the plug is secured, etc.

Heck... since the infrastructure would be starting from scratch, perhaps everything could be standardized to a modern design. Wouldn't that be nice? Perhaps even such that the charger can find and mate with the outlet on its own and you don't even need to get out of your car.

that *only* practical method for refilling your electric car is battery pack exchange at refueling stations

Lol -- you're joking, right? Several hundred pounds bolted to your frame (so the weight doesn't shift around), on the bottom of the vehicle (to keep the center of gravity low, most designs require this), and you want to swap it every week or so? And you think this is somehow *safer* than hooking up a cord that doesn't start current flow until it's in place?

Re:Still can't do it, I'm afraid.

[Rei]

Oh, wait a minute. It almost sounds like you're trying to claim that the converter would melt even during a *slow* charge! Seriously, you think 100 amps, 250 volts, would melt a AC/DC converter? Seriously? At 80% efficiency, that's 5kw of heat. That's 1.4 "tons" of cooling needed, which is the equivalent of a small single-room air conditioning unit (~$400) *if* you wanted to bring it down to room temperature. But why make it operate at room temperature? You can operate hotter than ambient temperature, and then you don't need a compressor at all. In fact, I bet you could run it at a safe temperature with just something like a 200-400 CFM fan.

Not that everyone needs to charge at home. But it is most certainly an option.

thickness

[somasynth]

each with a diameter one-thousandth the thickness of a sheet of paper How much is that in thickness of a library of congress? Standardize your measurements people!

Re:thickness

[Fantastic Lad]

I believe it's one Library of Congress times two football fields divided by one Statue of Liberty, carry the Eiffel Tower and subtract the square of the width of a human hair. -The margin of error being the thickness of a postage stamp sitting on the roof of the Empire State Building. Or something like that. --And if you put peanut butter in a horse's mouth, it looks like it's talking.

-FL

I think you mean "smaller, faster laptops".

[argent]

Over the last decade and change, improvements in hardware efficiency and battery performance have not tended to produce laptops with longer battery life, though there have been occasional exceptions. Rather we have seen smaller laptops using smaller batteries, and laptops with faster processors, more memory, and higher power consumption.

Let's compare two of the smallest laptops for their time, the 10 year old Tochiba Libretto, and today's Eee PC.

My Toshiba Libretto 110CT had a five hour battery life on a 2400 mAh battery. Today, the ASUS Eee PC is smaller, lighter, and more powerful... and has less than a 3 hour battery life on a 4400 mAh battery. The Eee PC's battery appears smaller than my Libretto's but it's still big enough to make it look hunchbacked: I'm sure that if ASUS could have reduced the size of the battery in the Eee PC by a factor of 10, they would.

Troll

[PPH]

Yes, but will that be sufficient to boot Vista?

Not So

[Jane Q. Public]

Sure you can. Simply apply heat, or short the terminals, or employ a number of other methods almost as simple.

Re:Not So

[gweihir]

Heat dows not work. Shortening theterminals will burn the batteries down, but will not cause an explosion, since it will at least take several seconds fort the discharge. When we have something like 10us for complete energy discharge, we start to reach what explosives dp.

So any numbwer of methods that do not work, juist as the ones you propose. I submit that your ego is large and your competence is small.

Electric cars

[sarcells]

What would this do for a Chevy Volt? The article mentioned cars, but nothing quantitative.

Li-ion batteries

[David Jao]

Both you and the GP are correct. Li-ion batteries degrade over time no matter what, but they degrade least quickly when kept at 40% charge.

Judgement is in. This is vaporware

[maxm]

It is not a product release, but a press release about research findings. They have a material with interesting properties.

A real product is probably 5-10 years away. 5-10 years being a code for "We think it will work, but we need more money."

Cost benefit

[Leithauser]

Seems to me that this could solve the two biggest problems with electric cars. The first is range. Obviously, these batteries solve that problem. The second is cost, where the batteries are the biggest cost of electric cars. You could reduce the number of batteries in the car by using these new batteries. If these batteries can hold 10 times the charge, you could replace the older batteries with about 1/3 as many batteries. That would give you about 3 times the range at about 1/3 the battery cost. This is assuming that these batteries do not cost much more than regular LiIon batteries (say, no more than 10% to 20% more).