Crushed Silicon Triples Life of Li-Ion Batteries In the Lab 123
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."
Jesus Christ, it's a Li-ion... (Score:5, Funny)
get back in the car, this Safari is over!
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Wake me when you see Lion-O.
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If it's a Fisker Karma there's fire inside too.
I'll believe it when I see it for sale (Score:1)
Lithium battery developments come almost as fast as "new cure for cancer"...and few of them get out of the lab.
But...it can never replace gasoline. (Score:5, Funny)
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?
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As we know from recent experience, Hydrogen 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?
FTFY
Give it some time... The Universal Ingredient Label [xkcd.com]
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Letting your sarcasm go whoosh for a moment...
The energy density [wikipedia.org] of a lithium-ion battery is currently about 1/6th that of gasoline and this improvement will take it up to nearly 1/3rd. But of course, gasoline isn't recharable. And the energy density of gasoline is highly unlikely to improve further, while batteries certainly will. So it is no exaggeration to say that this development basically seals the deal for electricity vs gasoline. My next car will most certainly be all electric, and it will be a beas
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Excuse me... "will take it up to nearly one half".
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We should keep the overall efficiency of the fuel and the engine in mind. The traditional gazoline engines only have a 30%to 40% efficiency in the best case (40% to 50% for diesel), while electrical engines are usually over 90%. Add to that the electrical car can get energy back when breaking while it is pure loss for gasoline, and you have now an electrical car that has a longer range than a gasoline car.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake_specific_fuel_consumption [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premium_effici [wikipedia.org]
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The model S goes 265 miles with current battery technology, if you take the claim from the summary that goes to about 750 miles. You need a high end diesel car to get close to this kind of range.
Of course I do not expect a 800 miles electric car anytime soon. The cars will probably stay in the under 300 miles range while getting the prices down to a more affordable level ($30k range). The other big issue is charging. It probably takes 10m on average to fill a tank (my costco has long lines), but the infrast
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Yep. It will happen in a few years. Gas isn't going to be around forever and China is now the biggest consumer so it will be a matter of time before gas shortages and prices going up. By then for those with electric cars will be happy.
My next car is going to be all electric so hopefully soon they will get this into production.
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Did you read the article? Is says it lasted 600 Cycles.
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The article said they tested this 600 times so we don't know how many recharge / discharging cycles it can do before it degrades.
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I think you are being pedantic.
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I love every fourth fall.
this is getting old (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you want to only hear about consumer products go somewhere else.
This is slashdot.
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To the credit of whoever submitted the summary, this one was explicit about, "Something worked well in a lab", instead of the usual, "Your Batteries Will Soon Be 3x's Better!"
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This one gives me the sense it will be rapidly commercialized.
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10 x 3 = 30
Re:this is getting old (Score:4, Interesting)
There's several areas which are ripe for improvement in batteries.
1) Power density.
2) Recharge cycles.
3) Charge time.
4) Charge efficiency.
5) Shelf drain.
Even if a certain technology gives a 10x improvement on one of those, it may turn out to have a negative impact on one (or more) of the others, and therefore not be worth marketing.
Example:
My new battery technology improves cuts charge time in half! It also cuts power density by a factor of 3. In certain, specific scenarios it might still be worth using one of these new batteries, but in general, it's won't be.
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6) Resisting catching fire and exploding [dailycaller.com]
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Have they fixed that one for hydrocarbons?
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Re:this is getting old (Score:4, Insightful)
Part of it is advancements in batteries, but the other part is improvements in power consumption. Five years ago, LED backlights were rare, and CFL backlights were common. Today, I'm not sure if you could even find a CFL backlight in a notebook. LEDs are a bunch more power efficient than CFLs, and the backlight has always been one of if not the largest consumer of power on average in a notebook. Even when the notebook isn't doing any other work, it needs to keep the screen lit up for the user to see what's on it.
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What we actually need to do is compare old battery packs to new ones, that's the only thing which will give us reliable density improvements. Looking at all of the other improvements doesn't actually affect the physical density of the battery, which is what this technology (and the previous "breakthroughs") claim to achieve. Most laptops still come with in-a-metal-tube battery cells, which are much heavier and have big air gaps that don't need to be there. Compare this to your cellphone battery and you'll s
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That's not really the case for a lot of laptops though. Any tablet convertible, any ultrabook, any macbook, any Chromebook, anything with an integrated battery, they're all lithium polymer. I suspect that if you add up all lithium polymer laptops, they'd be a rather large part of the notebook market.
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No, they are not.
We've got LED kicking the pants off of CFL by roughly triple the photon flux density per watt.
Wikipedia is not reliable. Those sources are way outdated. We've got 1W diodes pumping 150 lux/W and Cree has already smashed past 200 lux/w and did that last year. Arrays of these diodes pump out huge amounts of light.
~designs horticultural LED and interior LED lighting
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I refuse to update that place. They'll as always cite 'original research' and wipe it out. Had it happen many times.
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Go look all over alibaba.com - most of the newer 1000w spotlights are pushing 170,000 lumens or more, for 170l/w.
It's already been mainstream for well over a year.
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Cree has this page [cree.com] crowing about one of their their CXA series modules being 108 lm/W at 85c and 119 lm/W at 25c. I haven't found anything higher. Here's the datasheet [cree.com].
Re:this is getting old (Score:5, Insightful)
Lithium ion batteries improve at a rate of 8-10% per year. So, if we take into account that a lot of the lab claims are exaggerated, a "10X" breakthrough that actually provides a 2X improvement and takes 7-8 years to hit the consumer market is pretty much in line with the expected curve.
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no, I'm talking about this (Score:2)
Back in January 2008 /. ran this article:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/08/01/16/027236/nanotech-anode-promises-10x-battery-life [slashdot.org]
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
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.
So how would you explain the use of "space-saver" spares? They are chosen for their aesthetics?
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They are 'space' savers, not 'weight' savers ? The spare tires are usually in the trunk where you want maximum storage while the 12V battery is under the hood, where things are crammed but most consumers would rather see that the space is fully used rather than seeing a lot of empty space where the engine lives.
I need this NOW! (Score:1)
Droid 4 owner here... I need a battery made with this technology NOW. Maybe then a charge would last a whole work day.
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Turnabout or retirement program? (Score:2)
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We can recycle our batteries to be turned into electronics and our electronics to be turned into batteries. What a beautiful coincidence.
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And last time I checked, silicon doesn't burn merrily like graphite does.
Sand Cars (Score:1)
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I never would have thought my first electric car would be powered by sand!
Who needs a sand car when you've got ornithopters?
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I never would have thought my first electric car would be powered by sand!
There have been other modes of transportation [youtube.com] that have been powered by sand.
Yay, another amazing new advance for batteries! (Score:2)
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First question that comes to mind. What voltage are these batteries at? 1000 amp-hours at 12 volts is a lot different than 1000 amp-hours at 120.
Gasoline gets 12,000 watt-hours as a reference.
As for these batteries, I am hoping for use in larger applications than just a skinner smartphone.
One amp-hour per gram is pretty good, assuming this is a twelve volt battery. Compare that to a deep cycle lead-acid battery that weighs about 18 kilograms and gives 150 AH or so. For the same amount of energy as that
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Nominal li-Ion cell voltage is 3.7 volts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery [wikipedia.org]. Which makes you wonder about the 1,000 mAh/g versus 350 mAh/g figures they quote, since they aren't the normal units for specific energy, specific power, or energy density. They also don't work out right if you assume the nominal cell voltage either.
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Battery materials are reported in mAh/g because this way they are independent of the battery size. You could stuff say 50g of this material into a battery meant for a car or 1/2g of this material into a battery meant for testing in a lab and you can roughly estimate the energy storage abitlity of the material. Both of these cells will have a voltage of about 3.7V on average. The units of mAh/g tells you about the amount of lithium that can be stored by this particular material so that it can be compared aga
Won't notice any change (Score:2)
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.
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You fail econ 101.
Worst case the devices using this will get lighter and battery life will stay the same.
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And if you get to the highest levels of econ you learn that the economy is actually governed by the spirits of millions of aliens killed in a volcano many years ago by Lord Zenu.
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Still has about the same accuracy at predicting stuff as high level economics.
Still, Life would be so much easier if most people at least understood the concepts taught in economics 101&102.
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No way they would do that for cars and phones that desperately need more power. Well, Apple might because thinness is their #1 priority.
Re:Won't notice any change (Score:4, Interesting)
Your making the assumption that the cost reduction in using fewer materials offsets the new manufacturing process – which we don’t know (could be high, lower, or the same).
For years we have been able to manufacture cars that get better gas mileage by switching from steel to aluminum, carbon fibers, etc – but we have never done it because the cost of the lighter materials (both in manufacturing and maintenance) are higher.
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Companies will reduce the size of the battery two thirds and still charge the same amount of money for it.
You mean, Apple will. The real world will obey the laws of economics.
My cellphone battery is almost dead... (Score:5, Funny)
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That's not the right material anyways. If you want to see what silicon boobs would be like, watch Sacha Baron Cohen's "The Dictator."
More power, More space, lighter weight (Score:1)
Re:More power, More space, lighter weight (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Thanks, Captain Obvious, for clearly explaining the ramifications of "3x" ... :-)
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Re:More power, More space, lighter weight (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd choose 1/3rd the size and weight.
Forget that, I want a smartphone with battery life that is measured in days instead of hours.
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I'd choose 1/3rd the size and weight.
Forget that, I want a smartphone with battery life that is measured in days instead of hours.
We have that already. It's called the RAZR MAXX.
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It'd also be a bomb. Hit it with a hammer, run. Energy dump.
Also 'crushed' is not a nano-material. Could you imagine nano-granularized silicon?
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I wonder if the TSA will start to not allow batteries that have a really high energy density?
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Keep in mind they are saying triple the density of the anode, which is only half of the battery, so this is more like a potential for 1.5x improvement in overall battery size. SIlicon is also heavier by weight than the carbon, so this might mean minimal improvment in energy per weight.
New Miracle batteries since 1901 (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [lowtechmagazine.com]
(ctrl+f -> miracle batteries)
Technology changes incrementally and not on public demand.
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What a fucking stupid article. They inappropriately compare the "range" of a 1901 car with a top speed of 25 MPH and a Nissan Leaf with a far greater top speed.
Nowhere in the article do they attempt to do the incredibly easy task of getting into a Nissan Leaf and driving it at a constant 25 MPH to determine its range at the same top speed of the 1901 car. As their own article states "driving faster uses more 'fuel'
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The point is, it isn't even published as of right now.
All they had to show for their super duper battery were two vials of approximately 0.1g of the stuff, but already claim it's cheap, easy to produce by the tons, durable etc.
The whole thing is as fake as it gets and I wonder what gullible fool fell for it.
so...... (Score:1)
Expanding sponges in our batteries (Score:2)
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.
I went to one (Score:2)
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However, I was the only one who came!
I'm happy for you that you had a good time, but how many people were there?
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If you are the only one who came, you need to be a more attentive and generous lover.