Engineers have designed a way to use lithium as the anode component of a battery (abstract), potentially allowing for smaller and lighter batteries with more power.
All batteries have three basic components: an electrolyte to provide electrons, an anode to discharge those electrons, and a cathode to receive them.
Today, we say we have lithium batteries, but that is only partly true. What we have are lithium ion batteries. The lithium is in the electrolyte, but not in the anode. An anode of pure lithium would be a huge boost to battery efficiency.
"Of all the materials that one might use in an anode, lithium has the greatest potential. Some call it the Holy Grail," said Yi Cui, a professor of Material Science and Engineering and leader of the research team. "It is very lightweight and it has the highest energy density. You get more power per volume and weight, leading to lighter, smaller batteries with more power."
But engineers have long tried and failed to reach this Holy Grail.
"Lithium has major challenges that have made its use in anodes difficult. Many engineers had given up the search, but we found a way to protect the lithium from the problems that have plagued it for so long," said Guangyuan Zheng, a doctoral candidate in Cui's lab and first author of the paper.
In addition to Zheng, the research team includes Steven Chu, the former U.S. Secretary of Energy and Nobel Laureate who recently resumed his professorship at Stanford.
"In practical terms, if we can improve the capacity of batteries to, say, four times today's, that would be exciting. You might be able to have cell phone with double or triple the battery life or an electric car with a range of 300 miles that cost only $25,000 - competitive with an internal combustion engine getting 40 mpg," Chu said.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 28 2014, @04:08PM
Too bad the manufacturers of electronics will simply shrink the device size instead of increasing battery life. My Nexus 5, as wonderful as it is, barely lasts a day on one charge. I'd love for designers to realize that at some point, thickness doesn't matter. The device could be 1 mm thicker and nobody would give a damn as long as it provided enough battery life to go through a day and a half without looking for a charger.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday July 28 2014, @04:13PM
I'll agree with this completely.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Buck Feta on Monday July 28 2014, @04:19PM
>> thickness doesn't matter... as long as it provided enough battery life to go through a day and a half
So it's more about duration of performance, than size?
- fractious political commentary goes here -
(Score: 2) by bugamn on Tuesday July 29 2014, @12:45AM
I think it's a matter of how you use it. Use it well and performance will last longer, no matter the size.
(Score: 1) by TestablePredictions on Monday July 28 2014, @11:50PM
I always see phones and tablets put into a one or another kind of thick case. You're absolutely right that thinness is a joke. Manufacturers still haven't heard the laughter yet. Sigh.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday July 28 2014, @04:15PM
What steps has been taken or remain and how long time is it estimated that this needs before this kind of more powerful Lithium batteries is available for online ordering or store shelves ?
Portable devices that won't last a day is pathetic..
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday July 28 2014, @07:05PM
Well, the smart-ass answer is always 10 years for any new battery technology.
My HTC One M8 easily gets two days. (Full 48 hours with 5-10 percentage remaining). And I'm a pretty heavy user, but I live on Wifi most of the time. Even driving long distances it lasts a full 24 hours.
As it ages, I expect less.
I suspect manufacturers will not add batteries that exceed two days by much, because if you give 4 days, people will forget, and then deep-cycle their batteries, leading to more early failures.
Of course it wouldn't hurt them to have a charge warning alarm that triggers somewhat sooner than a two minute warning.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 28 2014, @04:20PM
Wait until there are big chunks of solid lithium in a battery
(Score: 5, Informative) by Foobar Bazbot on Monday July 28 2014, @04:41PM
As it happens, there are already big chunks of metallic lithium in batteries. The summary leaves out the key word "rechargeable"; the difficulties with a metallic lithium anode that these researchers are attempting to overcome pertain to charging, not discharging. 3V coin cells, CR123A camera/flashlight cells, Energizer Lithium AA/AAA cells (and other alkaline-substituting cells using Li-Fe chemistry) all have metallic lithium anodes.
And yes, there have been rather serious incidents with some of the larger Li batteries.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday July 28 2014, @05:08PM
What happens to these designated one-time-use batteries if they are recharged very slowly? say over two days or such.
(Score: 2) by Foobar Bazbot on Monday July 28 2014, @05:54PM
I haven't tried it, and am not an industry insider but a mere battery enthusiast, so understand that this isn't an authoritative answer in any sense, but I'm pretty sure the problems don't go away or even appreciably diminish with slower charging. Look forward to horrific dendrites, causing ludicrous capacity loss and eventually (i.e. within a few cycles) shorting your battery and possibly making it explode while charging.
So by all means, test this, video it, and post the results to youtube, but do take reasonable safety precautions such as doing it outside, in a pail of sand, well away from anything you'd rather didn't burn.
(Score: 2, Funny) by arulatas on Monday July 28 2014, @06:51PM
It is so hard not posting flame-bait as you are attempting to bait the GP into creating a flaming hole where his charging unit used to be.
----- 10 turns around
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday July 28 2014, @06:12PM
There's about 20 lithium chemistry batteries, all different, I'm guessing you're talking about those 1.8 volt (not a typo) AA size consumer batteries aka the lithium iron disulfide batts.
What complicates it is you start with metallic Li and iron disulfide, and end up with lithium sulfide and iron metal in a two step process. And the usual organic electrolytes and stuff.
I don't think you can drive that set of reactions in reverse? You'd just end up with a weird power resistor, basically? I think you could drive the first reaction backwards but the second is a no-go?
That was the problem with the lithium sulfur rechargables, they had to put carbon in the cathode because sulfur isn't a very good conductor. Lithium sulfide is a decent insulator, isn't it?, so likely you'll just drive the thing into high internal resistance and not dissipate much power.
Unlike most batteries this doesn't involve hydrogen as long as you don't open it up and get water in there, so at least you don't have to worry about that.
I'd second the other guy's comment, if you have to be told to bury this in the center of a 5-gallon bucket outside right after a rainstorm with 50 foot leads upwind to whatever lab gear you got, you probably shouldn't be doing this kind of stuff.
I haven't had much luck setting Li batteries on fire, although those that manage to pull it off report its pretty exciting.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday July 29 2014, @02:30AM
If you are thinking of experimenting... a toaster oven makes a nice place to place the battery under test.
I have several old ovens I use for my tests. ( Also, those outside barbeques with flip down lids work well too ).
I have set fire to a few. These were cells from laptop batteries. I got them out of a recycle bin. So, I figure I may as well finish blowing them up just for the education of it. Deliberate charge fault. Just had to see what they did.
I have nothing any more spectacular to report than that which has already been posted on YouTube. Mine carried on like a little firework went amiss. In my cases, the whole pyrotechnics episode lasted about a minute before sputzing out. Some just got really hot. Some violently popped and that was it.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]