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Researchers Report Super-Powered Battery Breakthrough
another random user writes with news that researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are reporting a breakthrough in battery technology. They say:
"With currently available power sources, users have had to choose between power and energy. For applications that need a lot of power, like broadcasting a radio signal over a long distance, capacitors can release energy very quickly but can only store a small amount. For applications that need a lot of energy, like playing a radio for a long time, fuel cells and batteries can hold a lot of energy but release it or recharge slowly. ... The new microbatteries offer both power and energy, and by tweaking the structure a bit, the researchers can tune them over a wide range on the power-versus-energy scale (abstract). The batteries owe their high performance to their internal three-dimensional microstructure. Batteries have two key components: the anode (minus side) and cathode (plus side). Building on a novel fast-charging cathode design by materials science and engineering professor Paul Braun’s group, King and Pikul developed a matching anode and then developed a new way to integrate the two components at the microscale to make a complete battery with superior performance. With so much power, the batteries could enable sensors or radio signals that broadcast 30 times farther, or devices 30 times smaller. The batteries are rechargeable and can charge 1,000 times faster than competing technologies – imagine juicing up a credit-card-thin phone in less than a second. In addition to consumer electronics, medical devices, lasers, sensors and other applications could see leaps forward in technology with such power sources available."
...Magic was discovered today and practical and affordable applications for it are now only 30 years away!
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
I'll believe it when it's in my phone.
My Google Glasses will now be able to broadcast for decades! :P
That was the most worthless infomercial ever.
Sign me up!
(New headline: Hackers can turn your laptop into a bomb!)
OK, if this actually works out, this is great news. Fast charge and discharge are incredibly useful. Unfortunately, the article does not say anything about storing more energy than existing batteries, which I assume means energy storage is about the same. So, you will be able to recharge your phone very quickly (seconds?), but the phone will still last as long on the batteries as it does now.
Unless there is a massive increase in power density within a battery, it ain't a super battery, nor is it a breakthrough.
If only we could fall into a woman's arms without falling into her hands
From the supplemental material: "The energy densities of the microbatteries are initially superior to the supercapcitors, but lose an average 5% total energy density after each cycle."
Electric cars breaktrough,
Now Musk can build his electric plane :)
Another company buys and buries this tech. Or it'll be released in 10 years. It would be a fantastic battery to put into Electric cars, which is another technology we're far overdue for and have the ability to make right now.
Behold the Motorola TAZR!
Set your phasers on "funky"!
By all your battery breakthroughs combined... I am Captain Perpetual Motion!!!
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
That's all fine and dandy, but can you tell us how your REALLY feel?
...this new battery has a superior energy density than a supercapacitor, but lithium ion batteries generally have in the region of 100x the energy density of a supercapacitor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Energy_densities_of_common_energy_storage_materials) so this doesn't sound too revolutionary to me. Energy density is surely the important factor for most personal electronic equipment, rather than power density.
1000 times faster than the worst amongst the competing technologies.
That 3rd image on the abstract link shows a much better summary. At best it claims to be better than current lithium ion batteries by a factor of 10 in power density, but lithium ion batteries are still able to beat it in energy density.
imagine juicing up a credit-card-thin phone in less than a second
I'd like to, but my fuses just blew, the connector in the phone melted down, there's a smell of burning plastic insulation in my room, and a small fire seems to have started burning here, so I have other things on my mind!
Ezekiel 23:20
It's why I opted for the lower performance but much better battery in my RAZR MAXX over the RAZR when they first came out.
Next though, it'll be performance. Holding out to see if it'll be the S4 or if another flagship phone will be worth buying Q3/4 ish...
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Previous attempts to increase reaction surface area have included alternatining disks, folded sheets, porous poweders, nanotubes ... But the tiny networked cubes shown in the diagram looks like it could be a winner.
...do we ignore the first law of thermodynamics? If these batteries charge 1,000 times faster then they must put off 1,000 times the heat or so one would think under the law. Further, the largest collection of Lithium is sea water, but it is very inefficient to harvest existing at the ppm level.
The phone is credit-card thin, but the power connectors equal those on a car battery.
I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.
Marketing: "Phone batteries that fully re-charge in a minute!"
Reality: Monthly $50 battery replacement
Informercial? TFA specifically stated "pushing into an area in the energy storage design space that is not currently available with technologies today.” as opposed to advertising something that it available. As science report goes, this is remarkably adequate.
... Elon Musk has one hell of a rager over this. This could make electric cars that could go from Florida to New York on one charge, and recharge in similar time to a gas refill, a possibility.
Say you got 500 miles to a charge, which is a reasonable amount if these numbers are to be believed. That's the amount of miles driven by the average US driver in 2 weeks. So if the battery needs to be replaced after 8-10 charges, you're talking once a quarter. If the battery costs $250 and is easily user-replaceable, this isn't a big deal:
My quick, rough math says that if it lost 5% of the original maximum after every charge and the maximum charge of a brand new battery were 500 miles, 10 charges would come out to 3875 miles. If the battery can be produced for $250, that comes out to 15.5 miles to every $1 spent on the battery. Now, consider experiments are in progress to allow free/nearly free recharges, so the cost would really be reduced to just the battery. The current gas price I see out my window is $3.33/gal and my Scion xB gets about 30 MPG.
So, my Scion costs $3.33 to go 30 miles. The Tesla with a $250 battery would cost $2, and not explode the environment.
I'm sold. // of course these costs are pure conjecture until we know more.
In my country the Anode is the plus side of the battery ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Apple's Lightning II connector coming soon...
In Friday by Heinlein they have these batteries called Shipstones :-)
While the tech. is interesting, the lack of concrete information about it makes it useless, much like some of the hyperboly that has crept up in this place since the GREAT MIGRATION..Now based on the above comment about fuses blown, could also be dangerous.. Thanks /.
Oil Companies pay researchers to shut their mouths and sell them, their new discovery, where it will be hidden and never see the light of day.
"Don't you worry, never fear, robin hood will soon be here!"
"Well, where is he?"
Every damn week, there's another article here on Slashdot about some revolutionary energy tech, and every week it gets forgotten about, and in the meantime we can't even get our country to agree to build a pebble bed reactor to make electricity from all the nuclear waste we're currently throwing into the ocean.
I'll believe this advancement (like the super efficient or the super cheap solar cells), when it's available to the consumer. Because if it's that revolutionary, someone will want to get rich off it. But right now, I still can't afford to cover my roof with solar cells.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
All I want on the side of my battery not is a logo that says, "King/Pikul" Start a jam band, name it King Pickle, profit.
-
Jeremiah Cornelius just as he did here http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3581857&cid=43276741 and made the mistake of posting as his registered user name instead of his hundreds of anonymous coward ones he plastered into every post last month.
Pebble Bed Reactor?!?
Pffttt....
Didn't you hear were in the midst of a Natual Gas Revolution!
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
If you look at the supplemental material http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v4/n4/extref/ncomms2747-s1.pdf it becomes obvious this only gives an unfavorable tradeoff.
The configurations that give high power give lousy power density. Assuming using the same volume of batteries as modern cars you would wind up with a car that can go either 30Mi on a 10 minute full charge or a car that can go 100Mi on a 40 minute full charge.
This is not a good deal compared to modern tech that gets you 280 Mi on a 70 minute charge.
And that isn't even taking into account the 5% per cycle capacity degradation.
Shut up, Paul.
Slashdot: News for fuckwits who don't the difference between an anode and a cathode.
Wow! Did he win the slashdot awards for the longest article, and the longest article that was totally impossible to understand?
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Technology break-though in Urbana, Illinois? That is also where the HAL 9000 was created.
lightning bolt! lightning bolt! lightning bolt!
Even if the battery can supply 30 times the power, the distance that it can power a transmission is still proportional to square root power, i.e. 5.5 times the original.
And get them to buy the patent and make it impossible to use like they did with nimh....
imagine juicing up a credit-card-thin phone in less than a second
I'd like to, but my fuses just blew, the connector in the phone melted down, there's a smell of burning plastic insulation in my room, and a small fire seems to have started burning here, so I have other things on my mind!
Why is this rated funny instead of insightful? Moving more energy in less time is going to generate heat, lots of heat.
Also, instead of flawed batteries that seriously overheat we could have flawed batteries that explode.
Bah!
My guess.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
It is the same with storage technologies. We keep getting teased by advances in holographic storage, be it Tamarak in the early 90s, to InPhase/hVault. Always just right out there.
Energy is a matter of won't, than can't. Didn't we have a working thorium reactor at one point? The issue is that there is a whole market structure whose only reason for existing is to extract every single yuan/dinero/dollar from anything that can be used for energy. Should an actual discovery be usable, it would totally decimate the energy market, and likely the world economy built on that house of cards.
Realistically: a civilization as advanced as ours should be on at least nickel fusion reactors at the minimum.
I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy!!!
"Here we report lithium ion microbatteries having power densities up to 7.4mWcm2m1,which equals or exceeds that of the best supercapacitors, and which is 2,000 times higher than that of other microbatteries."
WTF more do you want? you can calculate almost everything from there.
Sheesh.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
from the abstract:
"Here we report lithium ion microbatteries having power densities up to 7.4mWcm2m1..."
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Got Something real to Sell Right now? I needs 440 AH
Is Lookin at those golf cart batteries at the Sams Clup, cause the sli's R2 spenziv.
move more energy through the same cable size generates more heat.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
" I still can't afford to cover my roof with solar cells."
why not? can't get a loan? can't use a service that lets you pay off the solar panels based on the energy saved?
Or just too lazy to look into it?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It'd be just as fine if you did read 'super' as 'sugar' : http://news.discovery.com/tech/sweet-sugar-batteries-120927.htm
Discussion: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/09/28/234255/sugar-batteries-could-store-20-more-energy-than-li-ions
You stereotypers are all the same...
.do we ignore the first law of thermodynamics? If these batteries charge 1,000 times faster then they must put off 1,000 times the heat or so one would think under the law.
The first law of thermodynamics says that energy isn't created or destroyed. It has nothing to do with charging rates. With respect to charging it just tells you that the stored energy added plus the losses (mostly heat) add up to the energy you supplied. (Second law says you have to lose SOMETHING to make the charging happen - though it doesn't say how much.)
The key here is battery resistance. The heat produced is proportional to the SQUARE of the current. If you charged a battery with the same resistance a thousand times as fast, you'd generate a MILLION times the heat.
Charge is determined by current times time. Maximum charging rate is determined by the highest charging current you can drive while creating heat no faster than it can be dissipated with the battery almost at the maximum temperature it can stand. Resistance tells you how much heat you generate at a given current. Cut the resistance by a factor of a million and you can multiply your charging rate by a factor of a thousand and get the same heat generation.
The micro-geometry of the plates in this case (along with most of the recent ultra-fast-charge battery designs) results in drastically lowered resistance.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
We know it's you doing it http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3581857&cid=43276741
as lithium ion, but with much more power, there might be stories about heads and arms being removed instead of just being burned when a cell battery fails.
Wow, your post has just doubled the size of the internet.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v4/n4/full/ncomms2747.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22191650
Recharging in the same time as a gas refill is unlikely to ever happen.
Just exchange batteries at the refill station instead of recharging your own. A well thought device could make this happen even faster than current gas filling times.
On the civilian side, I am sure many hearing aid users will look forward to recharging their device, maybe by induction while wearing it, rather than consuming zinc-air batteries.
Or, really powerful Tasers!
That sounds fantastic, but will it blend?
As an electric vehicle enthusiast, (who owns no electric vehicles), I've been collecting battery breakthrough articles like this for a few years now and keep them listed on the worlds most boring blog. If any of you are having trouble sleeping at night google halsbatteryblog and try not to let your head hit the keyboard.