Slashdot Mirror
Cambridge Researchers Present Lithium-Air Battery Breakthrough (google.com)
Reuters reports on a tantalizing advance in battery technology described this week by Cambridge researchers, who have made large enough steps toward a practical lithium-oxygen battery to give a laboratory demo of their system. Commercially available lithium-oxygen batteries would be significant because they would
have the potential to deliver the desired power thanks to a high energy density - a measure of energy stored for a given weight - that could be 10 times that of lithium-ion batteries and approach that of gasoline. They also could be a fifth the cost and a fifth the weight of lithium-ion batteries. But problems have beset lithium-oxygen batteries that affect their capacity and lifetime, including troublesome efficiency, performance, chemical reaction and potential safety issues and the limitation of needing pure oxygen rather than plain old air. The Cambridge demonstrator battery employs different chemistry than previous work on lithium-air batteries, for example using lithium hydroxide rather than lithium peroxide. It also uses an electrode made of graphene, a form of carbon. The result was a more stable and efficient battery."
Some more about this research can be gleaned from Clare Grey's web page at Cambridge.
I'd be happy with one breakthrough battery for all the battery breakthrough stories I've seen on Slashdot for the last ten years...
Lithium batteries have more than doubled in energy density over that period, while dropping in price. That improvement resulted from the research, summarized and discussed on Slashdot, that you are now dismissing.
If you don't want to read about leading edge scientific research, then please go chat on Facebook or some other mainstream forum, and leave Slashdot to the true geeks.
If all the advances which were announced had played out as announced though they would probably have increased by a hundredfold or more.
Most research doesn't pan out. Not in batteries, or in any other area of scientific endeavour. That doesn't mean we should stop doing science. It also doesn't mean that we should stop reporting on science. If you don't want to read about science and technology, then GO SOMEWHERE ELSE. Go watch cat videos, or whatever. Good riddance. I am sick of all the SJW articles and other crap on Slashdot, so it is very annoying to read people like you whining about articles reporting real science and potential technological improvements. Articles on things like battery research are exactly what Slashdot is for.