MIT discovers batteries with indefinite lifetimes using solid-state-electrolytes | Hacker News Reader

MIT discovers batteries with indefinite lifetimes using solid-state-electrolytes

koreatimesus.com

183 pointsxasos74 comments

I have "battery breakthrough fatigue" so announcing a lab result isn't really going to get me excited. A licensing deal and a factory being built, much more exciting.

Interesting challenge of the terms indefinite and infinite. I read it as batteries that may die may not after every action (which would actually be indeterminate batteries :-)) rather than an infinite number of cycles.

What seems to be the trouble getting some of these to market? There seems to plenty of demand.

Is this a "Who Killed the Electric Car" conspiracy thing? A VC thing? Or a vaporware/chemistry-is-hard thing?

I guess that most of these are a science journalism thing: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd051809s.gif

For example, there was news recently about a breakthrough discovery of a -70C superconductor. The media spun it as if loss-free electricity transport and maglev trains are just around the corner. But in reality, this material (Hydrogen Sulfide) required 2 million atmospheres of pressure for superconducting at this temperature.

No conspiracy or lack of funding is behind the lack of practical applications, in this case it is just utterly unfeasible outside of a laboratory. But even if the material will never make it to the market, it's still a scientific breakthrough that will give scientists new understanding of how the processes work, and perhaps lead to other discoveries with more practical applications in 2, 20 or 200 years.

But a -70C superconductor could theoretically be used in space environment where the temperatures are even colder, no?

You still have to reproduce the immense pressure.

Space is "cold", but the problem is that it's hard to get rid of waste heat in space since you aren't surrounding by a heat-carrying fluid (air). Therefore a -70c superconductor would still require a large cooling apparatus to function properly.

Yeah that threw me too when I thought the same thing I never thought about how difficult it would be to get rid of heat in space I figured just let it go out into space not thinking there isn't anything to send the heat into; no medium.

NASA has a nice info page about it:

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/as...

Basically, there's no convection, so the only way to dump heat is by radiation.

And since a radiator absorbs as well as it emits, you need to create a shade with reflective material and point a directional radiator in its shadow at the emptiest space you can see.

So sure, superconductors could be really cold in space, but if their solar shade or thermal control system fails, they are suddenly really hot.

But waste heat is a valuable resource, thermoelectric generators could turn it into electricity, for example.

Yeah, you still need to get rid of the heat eventually. For example, thermoelectric generators depend on a temperature gradient to function, but you can't maintain a gradient without some kind of heat sink that draws heat away from the "cold" side.

That still sounds useful for something like a moon-based spaceport where they can drill heat sinks into the ground. Maglev catapults would help cut the amount of fuel they need to transport or produce.

A good battery specific coverage of this was http://www.amazon.com/The-Powerhouse-Inside-Invention-Batter...

What seems to be the trouble getting some of these to market?

Science.

... & engineering. Even if the science is well understood, the processes required to mass produce it at a cost that will make it competitive in the marketplace are not always a given.

Well, so yawn because this is announcing a simulation result. The lab one will probably come in a few years.

(Now, if I could find the article I read yesterday that explaining their current status...)

They're not even announcing batteries. They're announcing the theoretical possibility of a type of battery.

Wake me up when they have an actual reasonably priced working product in the market. This is getting tiresome as "breakthrough" news piled up but we are still using almost 10 year old technology.

R&D is not that simple and some of us appreciate this news. Coming to a thread only to complain that you can't have something immediately only adds to the overly negative feedback loop on HN.

His complain is not that he is not going to have it immediately, but that he is never going to have it. And I agree with him. We keep hearing of breakthroughs and the truth is that 99% of the time they vaporize.

That said, I'm happy to hear the amount of research put into finding better batteries.

It's always a possibility that we may never see this technology in use commercially, that does not mean that it is insignificant and cannot lead to an improved product later on. The work done here is still important regardless of whether or not we'll have it in our hands within the next five years.

I agree that every bit of contribution is important. In fact, behind every big discovery there are tens of hundreds of smaller discoveries, and hearing news like this is fantastic.

The thing though is that by defining every discovery as breakthrough, you end up confusing the readers and, more importantly, devaluing the discoveries that are really going to have a big impact.

But "Scientists make incremental contribution to the state of human knowledge" doesn't have that nice click-generating ring to it :-)

us civilians (from R&D point of view) don't care much about this. we're just fed up with devices losing power in few hours after normal usage, and tired of hearing about all-solving batteries that are nowhere in sight. so don't be surprised by negative emotions

Yeah! Is it all crap or is there something viable here?

Well, you will probably have an eternal sleep given that battery lifes are mainly used for Planned obsolescence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence) and these technologies will probably never get into the market.

You might be sleeping a long time. I doubt this will see the light of day anytime in the near future. It goes against the current "planned obsolescence" model.

This is great. Batteries could at last hold sentimental value as we pass them on to our children. "my granddaddy gave this battery to my daddy, who gave it to me before he died" etc.

Seriously, when I think about battery tech advancement, I think about all those millions of people doing it tough in temporary communities and camps with limited power resources and inadequate infrastructure. I don't get tired of hearing about new battery tech.

The abstract http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nmat43...

Toyota already made a prototype solid-state last year.

https://ecs.confex.com/ecs/imlb2014/webprogram/Paper33467.ht...

Battery prototypes are a dime a dozen, but none ever seem to reach the market.

Some do... http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/174477-at-long-last-new-l...

> none ever seem to reach the market

All batteries that you use today were (obviously) prototypes at some point in time. But you don't wait to prototype something until it's a done deal, you prototype to test. Are you really complaining that there isn't a higher success rate for all battery tests that are done?

My immediate observation is that "indefinite" means "unknown", not "unlimited". I'm not sure this is the word they wanted to use, but it may be a more accurate description.

With a solid electrolyte, it means "we are not aware of any process that will limit their lifetime - but it must die some day".

Exciting!

”My top advice really for anyone who says they got some breakthrough battery technologies is please send us a sample cell. Don’t send us PowerPoint, ok, just send us one cell that works with all appropriate caveats, that would be great. That sorts out the nonsense and the claims that aren’t actually true. Talk is super cheap. The battery industry has to have more BS in it than any industry I’ve ever encountered, it’s insane.”

Elon Musk

https://youtu.be/TzquC0USTEA?t=19m8s

It's all quite generic in the press release. And, nobody even tries to answer the number one question: how long until batteries like this could eventually hit the market?

The other major issue being: How does this affect all the other parameters that make a battery useful?

I mean, sure, an 'indefinite life' is fine, but not if it's got more limited charge/discharge rates, energy densities, etc.

"The new battery also has an improved power capacity that is 20 to 30 percent higher than traditional models, and can endure frigid temperatures as well"

Nothing about charge/discharge rates.

It's completely not characterized in any meaningful form. They shouldn't have made any claims to the media without a real demo and comparison to show with it. Otherwise, it does have a tendency to come off as unobtainium fogware.

It sounds like typical hand-waving prior to additional grant/paper rounds to explore it more. It would be more convincing if there a demo video showing charging and then discharging cycles based on a load like a phablet. The real proof would be temperature-compensated, high precision battery voltage/current logging, accurate to one microvolt/microampere respectively, to back up longevity claims with a measurably slower capacity decay, tested head-to-head against the best available batteries.

Not sure if this is the same "breakthrough" https://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/yolks-and-shells-improve-rec... It was also discussed in The Economist this week. Batter tech has been stuck in a rut for a long time so it's great news that better tech is in the way.

I don't know much about battery tech but I get the feeling that "rut" is actually just their business model. Hard to sell a lot of batteries/phones/etc. that work forever.

I was just chatting to someone about this today. I feel like my "honeymoon" period with my new iphone 6 is coming to an end. 6 months in and I'm starting to have to think about when I charge it. Definitely it's not in Apple's interest to solve this particular problem, especially when (I think) they've deliberately made the battery non-replaceable.

Well, in my case, I was using a second hand Nexus One for years (almost 3 years if I remember it right) without problems with the battery. I think that if you respect the charging cycles, you make it last longer (I usually wait until 10% of battery left to charge it)

FYI, waiting until a Li-ion battery is nearly fully discharged before recharging will actually shorten its life by 3-4x compared to recharging when it hits 50%. See: http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_li...

Really? I've heard that by doing that what you are doing is reducing the time the battery will be charged (it's like instead of using 100% of your battery, it set its limit at 50%). I don't have the source where I saw this, sorry.

You may be thinking of the "memory effect" of old NiCad batteries, which indeed needed to be thoroughly discharged before recharging otherwise they'd lose capacity. However, LiIon is a different chemistry, and different rules apply. I don't know of any modern device that still uses NiCad, though I'm sure there's still some legacy niche where they're useful...

Do not follow his advice.

To lessen the strain on your smartphone battery, keep it between 15% and 90% of charge and don't let it become too hot.

Modern batteries are not like the old ones.

You can take it to the apple store to get the battery replaced FWIW

I'm using an iPhone 5S bought almost two years ago, with no battery issues whatsoever (plug in overnight, use all day, don't worry about battery unless an app goes haywire and the phone is running hot for a few hours). My wife is still using her 4S - she also has no issues with the battery. #counter-anecdotes

Maybe we will finally get laptop batteries that don't "mysteriously" die after their maximum charge drops to 50% of the original. I'm looking at you lenovo..

It's not the same. This is the MIT press release https://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/solid-state-rechargeable-bat...

This really should be the link for this whole thread. First, it has some actual interesting details. Second, it hasn't been round-tripped through Google Translate.

It's been so stuck in a rut, relative to the demands of what we use it for, that it'd seem utterly magical for it to improve dramatically.

Imagine being able to use a laptop, or a phone, for days without plugging in. Seems completely impossible now, and my mental model of power usage vs battery drain is so set at this point that I think I'd have a really hard time trusting a vastly better battery to really work, even after seeing it work for a few cycles - I'd always be thinking, can this really be happening? When's it going to fail?

Wonder how long it would take for this to go away and just become the new norm? I'd love to look back on this post in a few years and laugh.

> Imagine being able to use a laptop, or a phone, for days without plugging in.

A Kindle has a battery life of a couple of weeks (30+ hrs active use), but it's actually a mixed blessing. Daily charging is a nightly routine you get used to. Biweekly charging, you just end up forgetting when it's time to charge and don't have any power when you need it.

> you just end up forgetting when it's time to charge and don't have any power when you need it.

This is just a design problem though. The Kindle should warn you when you only have a few days battery (or, say, a hundred page turns) left, or maybe an LED could light up to remind you, and it'd be fine. I say this as a mildly inconvenienced Kindle user myself, because I too forget to charge it...

I have to charge my electric car daily. If capacity was slightly increased, it would be biweekly. Do you think they should stop research ?

Battery energy density is hard to improve. Lithium is already the smallest non-gas atom, and we're within an order of magnitude of its absolute limits. Even though it seems like batteries have improved a lot over the last two decades, the vast majority of that is due to electronics that consume less power, not increased battery capacity.

That said, cost can still be reduced and cycle life can still be improved. And there are exotic ideas for better batteries too.

[1] An article on the progress and limits of batteries: http://www.nature.com/news/the-rechargeable-revolution-a-bet... (might be behind a paywall)

Imagine being able to use a laptop, or a phone, for days without plugging in.

Can't do it with my laptop but my phone stays on for 1-2 weeks. That's the reason I have a very basic phone, and it does everything I want my phone to do.

I would welcome a smartphone if it could do the same 1-2 weeks between charging. I could easily live with a "dumb phone" mode, that would just basically sleep while keeping 2G on for phonecalls and texts, but with a press of a button it would switch to the big operating system and allow me to check Google Maps or use the browser. Higher current draw using those applications would be justified, but needless activity when left idle isn't.

I agree with you in principle, but for me, when I say phone, I really mean internet connected pocket-sized computer.

As in, running the OS and apps is the device's primary function for me - making phone calls is a nice-to-have that I rarely use.

When the battery dies, it's not the ability to make phone calls that I miss - it's the ability to use the apps!

Xperia z (at least) series devices have an "ultra stamina" mode that does basically that. I have only tested it once, but it works really well and should give you way over a week of mostly sleeping.

Source: I own a z1 compact.

Even my cheap Moto G will do something similar without having an "ultra stamina" mode. I've brought it to several hiking trips where it's been lying unused in a waterproof bag with everything turned off except basic GSM so I can receive calls and SMS. After 5 days the battery reports ~ 50% capacity and projects it will last for 4 more days.

I'm surprised there are not phones with two batteries that do this (one for 2g calls etc. about 2 weeks and one for 4g/Apps/Etc.). I guess the battery costs of the screen are too high to bother, leading to a modest 2 day calls only, 1 day full phone situation... it's still not a bad idea in some ways, but might mean that you could never say you have run out of battery...

Sure, smartphones could really use improved batteries, however ultraportable notebooks are really impressive nowadays with decent performance, thin shapes, a weight of sometimes less than 1kg and batteries that last all day.

>Imagine being able to use a laptop, or a phone, for days without plugging in.

That's possible today. I used to take my old Macbook Air off the AC power in the morning and then use it on battery till in the evening.

> "It's been so stuck in a rut, relative to the demands of what we use it for, that it'd seem utterly magical for it to improve dramatically."

Sure, it'd be nice to have a sudden jump in battery capacity, but I think it's important to recognise that batteries have been getting better, just through incremental improvements rather than big leaps. This graph shows the change in battery density (between 2007 and 2013) and battery cost (between 2008 and 2013):

https://onclimatechangepolicydotorg.files.wordpress.com/2014...

"Source: US DoE report published as part of their EV programme."

Is there an article on this which says something other than the same thing four times? Yes, I get they're replacing a liquid electrolyte with a solid one, but that's all this piece says. What electrolyte? Oh, and is it really infinite power as the article says? Of course not.

Willing to wager this is just a breathless piece on carbon-air tech.

The lifetime refers to how many times you can charge and discharge the battery before it no longer works (if you have ever kept a rechargeable device for a long time you'll notice that the battery becomes less useful over time)

As I understand it, this does not mean you can power your laptop forever with a single charge, only that it can be recharged an indefinite number of times.

Right, they did not successfully rewrite the properties of matter and energy.

Cars, and maybe off-grid houses, are way more exciting than a laptop which becomes obsolete almost as fast as its battery wears off anyway.

Looks like a fake article the rest of the site is not working..

The rest seems to work, but it seems to almost exclusively sports and celebrities.

Let me guess: 3-5 years from hitting the market?

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