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Crushed Silicon Triples Life of Li-Ion Batteries In the Lab
derekmead writes "Batteries rule everything around us, which makes breakthroughs a big deal. A research team at Rice says they have produced a nice jump: by using a crushed silicon anode in a lithium-ion battery, they claim to have nearly tripled the energy density of current li-ion designs. Engineer Sibani Lisa Biswal and research scientist Madhuri Thakur reported in Nature's Scientific Reports (it has yet to be published online) that by taking porous silicon and crushing it, they were able to dramatically decrease the volume required for anode material. Silicon has long been looked at as an anode material because it holds up to ten times more lithium ions than graphite, which is most commonly used commercially. But it's previously been difficult to create a silicon anode with enough surface area to cycle reliably. Silicon also expands when it's lithiated, making it harder to produce a dense anode material. After previously testing a porous silicon 'sponge,' the duo decided to try crushing the sponges to make them more compact. The result is a new battery design that holds a charge of 1,000 milliamp hours per gram through 600 tested charge cycles of two hours charging, two hours discharging. According to the team, current graphite anodes can only handle 350 mAh/g."
get back in the car, this Safari is over!
Lithium battery developments come almost as fast as "new cure for cancer"...and few of them get out of the lab.
As we know from recent experience, Lithium is flammable, and something flammable, even explosive, can NEVER replace Gasoline, which is safe and has never burned anybody.
Surely they realize the futility of their methods, and we can go back to our safe and harmless internal combustion engines?
'It has yet to be published online.' what is this the stone age?
In recent years I've read, right here on Slashdot, about a couple of new li-on breakthroughs that we were told would be giving us 10x improvements, And at least one was claimed to be easily applied to current manufacturing techniques. So why should I believe this? And why should I get excited about a 3X "improvement" when we;ve already been told about 10X improvements?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Well, it's nice to see silicon winning back some ground from the Carbon Assault. The question is whether its new future in power systems makes up for losing its long-time prominence in microelectronics or whether batteries are just a consolation prize.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
You're rather off-topic. But I just wanted to say I went to one. However, I was the only one who came!
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I never would have thought my first electric car would be powered by sand!
In life you hoped to do what you could but mostly you did what you were told and that was the end of it.
Hopefully outside of the lab this translates into more than just "5% better life in real world conditions", or isn't totally unusable because the anodes crumble after 10 discharges or something. There is a LOT of work going into batteries these days, and it seems like some of it has to eventually pan out.
I read the internet for the articles.
Companies will reduce the size of the battery two thirds and still charge the same amount of money for it. Battery life will appear to remain the same to the end users.
practical applications are 5 years (and a fat grant) away?
My cellphone battery is nearly dead, so please may I squeeze it up between your lovely knockers, my dear? Oh, they're natural? Nevermind...
"Batteries rule everything around us"
Man, this submission is the worst rap song ever.
A lithium battery holding three times the capacity is significant. This could mean that the range of a EV could be three times, all else equal, or the battery could provide three times the voltage with the same capacity all else equal, or simply the size and weight of the battery could be 1/3rd the size leaving room for other components. Considering I race RC cars with lithium batteries in a six minute heat, I'd choose 1/3rd the size and weight.
Breakthrough paradigm shifting innovative batteries have been around at least since 1901 and none of them worked.
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/05/the-status-quo-of-electric-cars-better-batteries-same-range.html
(ctrl+f -> miracle batteries)
Technology changes incrementally and not on public demand.
get the 'lectrons
For a big surface area, study the structure of a Mentos(tm) in a bottle of Coke(tm). You can get a first hand account here. The uncoated Mentos has pits that allow a carbon monoxide bubble to form (actually more than one since there is more than one pit). Probably that structure would make a good anode for generating electricity too!
Now that Dice has taken over, perhaps they'd consider unbanning you?
my phone battery might last me past lunch some day?
The greatest right given is the right to be wrong...
Mandatory XKCD
http://xkcd.com/651/
So to this point, the limiter has been the anode, but just barely. In order to make this "discovery" meaningful (and it's not really a discovery, they've been working on silicon anodes for at least a decade now), you need a cathode that can keep up.
Back in January 2008 /. ran this article:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/08/01/16/027236/nanotech-anode-promises-10x-battery-life
Pretty much the same battery and the same concept as here, but with the promise of 10X improvement. There have been other articles just as promising, but we never really get the promised stuff. And don't get me started on the story about the new 200 mpg motor for electric car that was posted many years ago and "only two years before we will see it in cars". /. just posts too many of these stories as if they were real.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Title says 3x life, summary seems to indicate 3x power density.
Droid 4 owner here... I need a battery made with this technology NOW. Maybe then a charge would last a whole work day.
Never ascribe to malice or conspiracy that which can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
pssh. model aeorplane batteries that put out 2200mAh weigh around 75g each. x3 for the required voltage and that's around 200g of weight. to reduce that to 2g x3 = 6g would be immensely awesome.
I had read about the expansion phenomenon in the past. Does this mean that within every current Li-Ion battery there is a spongelike anode that is growing and shrinking in size whenever it charges? I don't think people realize that usually. Interesting.