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An advanced manufacturing approach for lithium-ion batteries, developed by researchers at MIT and at a spinoff company called 24M, promises to significantly slash the cost of the most widely used type of rechargeable batteries while also improving their performance and making them easier to recycle. "We've reinvented the process," says Yet-Ming Chiang, the Kyocera Professor of Ceramics at MIT and a co-founder of 24M (and previously a co-founder of battery company A123). The existing process for manufacturing lithium-ion batteries, he says, has hardly changed in the two decades since the technology was invented, and is inefficient, with more steps and components than are really needed.
The new battery design is a hybrid between flow batteries and conventional solid ones: In this version, while the electrode material does not flow, it is composed of a similar semisolid, colloidal suspension of particles. Chiang and Carter refer to this as a "semisolid battery."
Instead of the standard method of applying liquid coatings to a roll of backing material, and then having to wait for that material to dry before it can move to the next manufacturing step, the new process keeps the electrode material in a liquid state and requires no drying stage at all. Using fewer, thicker electrodes, the system reduces the conventional battery architecture's number of distinct layers, as well as the amount of nonfunctional material in the structure, by 80 percent. Having the electrode in the form of tiny suspended particles instead of consolidated slabs greatly reduces the path length for charged particles as they move through the material — a property known as "tortuosity." A less tortuous path makes it possible to use thicker electrodes, which, in turn, simplifies production and lowers cost.
The company has so far made about 10,000 batteries on its prototype assembly lines, most of which are undergoing testing by three industrial partners, including an oil company in Thailand and Japanese heavy-equipment manufacturer IHI Corp. The process has received eight patents and has 75 additional patents under review; 24M has raised $50 million in financing from venture capital firms and a U.S. Department of Energy grant.
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday June 25 2015, @01:32PM
Tim Berners-Lee convinced CERN to put the web in the public domain.
Universities should not patent inventions, nor form spinoff companies.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Thursday June 25 2015, @02:55PM
Tim Berners-Lee convinced CERN to put the web in the public domain.
Universities should not patent inventions, nor form spinoff companies.
This is a difficult discussion. On the one hand tax payers' money goes into universities. So should everything produced by universities be in the public domain? There can be spinoffs that have a business model based on services such as software support, when the software itself is open source (and there are quite a few examples) thereby avoiding the conflict. On the hardware side such a model might be difficult to implement and patents are likely needed for monetization. Patents can represent a considerable source of income for universities and can reduce inflow of tax money. One exmaples the GMR-patent from Juelich, Germany used for harddrive magenetic heads which financed (maybe still finances) a top500 supercomputer (currently no. 8). I believe that as long as the patents are used fairly (such as in the GMR-example) there can be a win-win for society/acedemia.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday June 25 2015, @07:39PM
This is a difficult discussion.
No, its not. A patent in the public domain has never held up the use of one invention in this country.
Everybody points to troll-ish cases in medicine, but the deeper you dig, the more you find it is just not true.
There is no risk here, any more than putting round tires on your freshly designed car prevents patenting the car's design. All engineered products these days include prior discoveries.
Allowing Universities to double dip government research grants and patent licensing is fundamental mistake. Unless the university can prove that no tax money went into the patent, it should automatically become public domain.
At the very least FRAND principals must apply.
Your weak attempt to make excuses just isn't convincing.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Thursday June 25 2015, @03:22PM
Who's going to stop them?
They killed Aaron Swartz over research papers, and they will kill Michael David Crawford.
💃 🔨 🔍 🎓 🔔 🏃 👊 💊 💀 🗽
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday June 25 2015, @03:36PM
crack central at three in the morning. someone is going to stick a knife into you and take it.
Thank you officer, but no one ever messes with me because i look just like a hells angel.
Ive been tazed four times. the last time i yanked the wires out of thetaser while it was still operating.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by Aichon on Thursday June 25 2015, @04:16PM
You're welcome to believe what you want, but the reality of the situation is that MIT is a private university, so they are welcome to do what they want, and these researchers are working at a private spin-off company, which again would mean that they are welcome to do what they want.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @04:36PM
> MIT is a private university, so they are welcome to do what they want
No, not welcome, legally allowed.
Don't be that guy who confuses legality with morality.