Toshiba Battery Charges In 10 Minutes

Slatterz writes "Toshiba has unveiled a battery prototype that offers a 90 percent charge capacity in just 10 minutes. The Super Charge Ion Battery (SCIB) is capable of handling 5,000 to 6,000 recharge cycles, compared to the typical 500 offered by standard lithium-ion batteries. The new battery is composed of a durable material that offers a high level of thermal stability and prevents overheating."

Comments

a better link

[Tumbleweed]

Is the InfoWorld article this seems to have come from:

Right here

This is being shown in a laptop, and will be in a Schwinn bicycle next year.

This sounds good, certainly, but I'm *really* hoping eeStor's superduperultracapacitor technology works out as advertised. That will change the world.

Re:a better link

[szquirrel]

Even better, this article. More tech specs.

Re:a better link

[lysergic.acid]

SCiB batteries can endure 5,000 to 6,000 recharge cycles, compared to around 500 cycles for standard lithium-ion batteries, according to a Toshiba executive manning the company's booth at the Ceatec exhibition in Chiba, Japan. At the show, Toshiba showed a prototype SCiB battery installed in a Dynabook laptop. The laptop was matched

only 500 cycles, really? that seems a little low. do they mean that after 500 charges the battery begins to decrease in capacity, or that the battery will start to fail completely after 500 charges? because that seems really really low to me.

i mean, most rechargeable batteries today are Li-ion batteries, right? i just wanna know how many recharges i have left on my PSP.

does it help if you make sure to plug the battery back into the charger before it's out of charge? what can you do or not do to help preserve the capacity and life-span of a li-ion battery?

Re:a better link

[MeepMeep]

only 500 cycles, really? that seems a little low. do they mean that after 500 charges the battery begins to decrease in capacity, or that the battery will start to fail completely after 500 charges? because that seems really really low to me.

i mean, most rechargeable batteries today are Li-ion batteries, right? i just wanna know how many recharges i have left on my PSP.

does it help if you make sure to plug the battery back into the charger before it's out of charge? what can you do or not do to help preserve the capacity and life-span of a li-ion battery?

Li-ion batteries are usually limited by 'calendar' life, not charge cycles - they start losing capacity the moment they are packaged at the factory and generally last a couple of years before they become too weak to use.

However, there are some strategies to extend their life:

1. Keep them cool (but not frozen)
2. Keep them at around 40% charge

Now, this probably isn't too useful for batteries that you are actively using - however, if you have spare lithium batteries lying around that you aren't using at the moment you might want to drain the charge to about 40% and zip them up in ziplock bags and put them in the fridge until you need to use them (check it once in a while to make sure they haven't drained to zero charge because that can kill them).

Also, this means that you should avoid letting your Li-ion batteries get hot unnecessarily, like leaving them in a hot car in the summer.

This is a good reference http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm

Re:a better link

[lysergic.acid]

hrm... well i guess it's a good thing that i've only let my battery die once or twice since i got it. with replacement batteries costing $40~50 a piece, i'll have to be more attentive about my charge state.

i seem to remember seeing several different stories on /. about "revolutionary" new battery techs, but i still haven't seen any alternatives to traditional li-ion batteries being sold at commercial retailers. IMHO lithium-titanate batteries look promising. manufacturers are claiming that these new lithium batteries can recharge in under 10 minutes--and that's for use in electric vehicles. this New Scientist article reports that mobile devices using lithium-titanate can recharge in 6 minutes, and each battery is capable of going through 20,000 charge cycles.

i'm guessing this technology is probably still too expensive to bring to market. it'll probably only be used in electric vehicles or other such applications which require much more durability and longer life-spans than traditional Li-ion batteries currently provide.

Re:a better link

[Kagura]

Hey, I just removed the "citation needed". You're good to go.

Re:a better link

[Rei]

This is basically the same technology AltairNano uses -- a traditional LiCoO2 cathode and a nanotitanate cathode replacing the traditional graphite one. In large format, you get 70-80Wh/kg. It's a little better than NiMH in that regard, but not much. It's also a lot more expensive (AltairNano's are $2/Wh; hopefully a heavy hitter like Toshiba can bring prices down). Where the chemistry shines is everything else. It's incredibly stable, rapid charges, handles a very wide range of operating temperatures, has a ridiculously high power density (~5 kW/kg), fire resistant, highly efficient, and so on down the line.

It's one of a variety of relatively new, commercially available li-ion chemistries, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. When you hear of lithium ion battery packs in electric vehicles, with the exception of Tesla, they're usually these new chemistries, not traditional LiCoO2/graphite cells. The next-gen chemistries look even more impressive, but we'll have to wait for them ;)

Re:a better link

[Lonewolf666]

Looks great for "micro-hybrid" cars that use only a small battery for recovering braking energy and a boost on accelerating. In these applications, you need a lot of power density. Or simply as a starter battery (good bye lead-acid).

For plug-in hybrids or electric only cars, LiPO4 is also interesting:
somewhat higher energy density, and the lower power density is not a problem due to the larger battery. An example of a system that seems to be commercially available:
http://www.valence.com/products/epoch_overview.html

Oh Cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

Will this battery explode or just burst into flames?

Re:Oh Cool!

[Vectronic]

Depends on how charged it is... less than 90% it bursts into flames, greater than 90% it explodes.

Sounds like LiFePo4

[imsabbel]

Well, the stats itself sound pretty much like A123 or similar cells: Lithium with an ironphosphate instead of cobalt anode material.

They have higher cycle times, and they can be charged at up to 5C without much problems (which would agree with the 10 min stated).

But they have a drawback: Only about half the energy density compared to normal Lithium Ions.

Not to mention that in order to really charge them that fast, you will need a much higher rated, and thus bigger/heavier PSU brick for the notebook...

Why 90%

[damn_registrars]

What is the purpose of giving us the time to charge to 90%? Is there something about the final 10% that takes longer to charge than the rest of the battery?

Or are they charging while running - and perhaps not able to get all the way to 100%? The article was lousy (to be generous) and doesn't say what it would take to reach 100%.

Re:Why 90%

[imsabbel]

Yes, there is:
Typically, the last few % take a as long as everything before together. Its just that the nature of the chemical reactions involved: During the charge, the battery voltage increases. The charger OTOH cannot push more than 4.2V (for normal batteries) respectively 3.7V for LiFePo4, in order not to damage the cells. This means that effective voltage drops during the charge, and duringe the last bits of capacity, there are only some 0.1V left. Add internal resistance, and its clear why it cannot fill up completely fast

Other comments suggested downrating, but that doesnt really make sense: as long as you leave it in the charger, it will gain charge for a while, so the real capacity is truely higher.

Re:Why 90%

[Spoke]

If you think of a battery as a bucket where the battery charge is indicated by the amount of water in the bucket.

Now imagine that you are trying to fill that bucket as fast as possible, which means using a firehose, and that spilling any water means damaging the bucket.

Getting the bucket close to full without making a mess is a lot easier than getting it 100% full which means you need to slow the fill down to trickle to make sure you don't over flow or splash water everywhere.

Charging the last 10% of battery capacity is difficult because the battery does not readily accept a charge as it's nearly full. This means to get the last 10% of capacity you need to slow down the charge rate, which means that in this case, it may only take 10 minutes to get to 90% full, but it may take another 30-60 minutes to charge up that last 10% without damaging the battery.

Re:Why 90%

[NaturePhotog]

It's based a long-standing rule of project cycles, known as the 90/90 rule: the first 90% of the project takes 90% of the time, and the last 10% of the project takes the other 90% of the time. Or at least that's how most software projects seem to end up... :-)

Re:Why 90%

[NaturePhotog]

I just spat Newcastle all over my keyboard reading this post. Luckily it still appears to be work

Keyboard, shmeboard...won't somebody think of the Newcastle!?! Let's all have a moment of silence for a nice brown ale gone to waste.

Re:90% = Bad Marketing?

[Original Replica]

That would depend some on the application, if a 90% charge in your battery bank in a electric car will get you 50 miles, then "50 miles charge in 10 minutes" would sell just fine. But if they also want to be able to boast about the total battery life and charge capacity, they can't be under rating them "This flashlight charges in to full in 15 mins and can be recharged 5000 times". If the charge rate drops significantly for the last 10% of charge, then it would behoove engineers making products that use these batteries to design around a 90% ten minute charge.

Previously on Slashdot:

[Randle_Revar]

http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/07/12/13/1714258.shtml

Re:90% = Bad Marketing?

[oldhack]

...blah blah ... of it's /rated/ capacity in 10 minutes.

-AC

The signature is a forgery.

Bullshit Meter

[sexconker]

Story about battery tech + 7
InfoWorld + 5
"prototype" + 10
" in just " + 15
"Super" + 3
A new acronym + 6
"capable of ... compared to standard ..." + 4

Total - 50.
It stinks, but who knows - it may just be a fine cheese or chocolate.

On the other hand, the Vaporware Meter is off the charts, and the "durable material" and it's claims broke the poor Economic Feasibility Meter.

Re:Bullshit Meter

[Randle_Revar]

These batteries are already available, for example see:
http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2008_09/pr2401.htm

This is a prototype of a *laptop version* of the battery.

Cycling of lithium ion batteries?

[tuttleturtle42]

Comparing to the number of cycles for a lithium ion battery doesn't make sense as lion batteries don't primarily degrade from cycling. Unlike some other battery technology, there is a major difference between the battery life when you cycle a lithium ion battery 100 times repetitively, and cycle it 100 times keeping it at 100% for a month between cycles. While the first would have degraded some, the latter could have degraded enough to be mostly dead.

In other news

[FriendSite.com]

Sony has just released a battery that goes from 90% to 0% charge in 10 minutes, but they get rather hot as a side effect

Yeah, but then your battery really could go to 11

[Overzeetop]

How could any geek not want a battery like that?

Re:90% = Bad Marketing?

[rjstanford]

How about, "This flashlight charges to full in 10 minutes. If you leave it plugged in for another two hours, you get an extra 10% 'superboost' charge!"

This is marketing language we're talking about, after all.

so whats new ?

[savuporo]

A123 LiFePO4 batteries have been charged at 10-15 minute rates by RC crowd for a couple years by now.

Re:90% = Bad Marketing?

[lysergic.acid]

oh i dunno, maybe honesty has something to do with it? not everyone is obsessed with advertising/marketing double-speak.

besides, why intentionally take 10% off of your advertised battery capacity? i think most consumers would be able to do the math and see that the competitor's 10 min. 90% charge is exactly the same as your 10 min. 100% charge--except the competitor's battery has 111% the capacity of your battery. that could be an extra 2 hrs. of music or games.

on a somewhat related note, a came across an interesting article while researching Li-ion batteries on wikipedia. apparently some Li-ion batteries are capable of being _fully_ charged in 10 minutes. so maybe this isn't as big of a breakthrough as it initially seemed?

More importantly,

[CSMatt]

How long does it take to discharge?

Re:Of interest...

[beav007]

And you won't need one.

Let's use Australian numbers (because I know them):
Available voltage from a standard wall outlet: 240v
Available amps: 10
Using Ohms law (and assuming resistance will remain roughly the same), I should be able to get nearly 100A @ 24v using a step-down transformer. Most laptops have an input of around 19v. As long as the leads can handle the amperage, it shouldn't be an issue.

It's the leads that will be an issue. IIRC, cars need 50-80A @ 12v to start. The leads that come off the battery for the starter motor are pretty big, and they only need to handle that current draw for up to 10 seconds...

More details - this tells me nothing

[theBike45]

It's almost a given that any details about some new battery technology always avoids the negatives. Those hopeful or shilling simply avoid the bad stuff. other li ion batteries can be recharged quickly and either 1) cost a fortune and weigh a ton (Altair) or 2) diminish their lifespan by so doing. Regardless, it all comes down to cost.This article says nothing about practicality, weight, etc.

Re:Of interest...

[torkus]

Actually it's quite a bit more than that in a car. You'll see a good 3-500 amps and more depending on engine size, age, temperature and other starting conditions.

In fact, batteries are rated in cold-cranking-amps - i.e. the number of amps they can supply to start the car while cold (probably around freezing, not sure of the exact temp measured at). A hefty battery is rated somewhere around 8-900 CCA.

You're right though - the wiring only needs to support that load for ~10 seconds in a worst-case situation so the conductors don't have to be as heavy as they would otherwise.

Re:Only 500 cycles?

[pushing-robot]

First, that's 500 *full* cycles. Most people don't completely drain Lithium Ion batteries before recharging them.

Second, that's not 500 cycles until the battery dies, it's 500 cycles before the battery only holds a certain percentage — usually 80% — of it's initial charge.

What also kills Lithium Ion batteries is internal oxidation, which occurs whether the battery is cycled or not. Storing a battery at 100% charge actually causes the battery to lose life as much as five times faster than if the battery was at 50% charge. In other words, if your devices spend most of their time at less than full charge, your batteries will last longer than if you let them sit on the charger for years on end.

Speaking of which, I wish all notebooks, MP3 players, and other gadgets gave you the ability to set a charging limit. I've only seen the feature on some Sony notebooks (they call it a "battery care" utility). If you could limit your devices to, say, a 40% charge when they're just going to be sitting around the house all day, and only charge them up to full when you really need the battery life, you'd probably never need to replace a Lithium Ion battery again.

Re:Of interest...

[ncc74656]

The wire gauge needed for some application is determined by current; voltage only matters to the extent that the insulator around the wire needs to be thick enough to avoid dielectric breakdown. A power cord that carries 30A at 240V uses the same wire gauge (10 ga., IIRC) as one that carries 30A at 120V, but the thicker insulation on the 240V cord makes it a bit larger. 100A through some 24-ga. hookup wire will burn out just as fast at 1V as it will at 100V or 10kV; the higher voltages might make for bigger sparks when the wire finally melts, but the resistive heating of the wire is proportional to the square of the current.