Scientists say new material can triple lithium-ion battery energy density

I believe in battery research a half cell is a perfectly acceptable test bed for quantifying cathode performance, given that the anode material is not the bottleneck in the device. Researchers shouldn't have to spend their time doing full-device optimization every time they want to demonstrate improvement in a material.

Agree, but I would be interested to know whenever they have a working prototype, rather than wait for a production ready design.

Totally with you. Battery research headlines are as reliable as apocalypse predictions these days.

Lithium-ion batteries have been slowly improving over the last 30 years. Every year they get a little cheaper, a little higher capacity, a little more reliable, a little higher discharge, over a few more charge cycles.

> In 1994, the cost to manufacture Li-ion in the 18650 cylindrical cell was over US$10 and the capacity was 1,100mAh. In 2001, the price dropped to below $3 while the capacity rose to 1,900mAh. Today, high energy-dense 18650 cells deliver over 3,000mAh and the costs are dropping.

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/lithium_based_bat...

It's not the revolution we may want, but it is the successful application of battery research.

Another thing to keep in mind: It makes no difference if battery capacity grows but power consumption goes up as well. When you have hungry apps (say, Chrome) hogging resources with no regard to the user's device, there is little to be gained from having denser batteries.

And there have been amazing incremental battery advances over the last decade.

Industrial Applications, as Tesla has shown in Australia & Puerto Rico, are still a magnificent boon to society, so I hope they roll-out the more dangerous iterations sooner than later.

Petrol is fairly flammable and explosive too, but we still drive around with big tanks of it under the back seat

> the higher capacity a battery is the more it resembles a bomb

A battery is a package containing the reagents necessary for a highly energetic reaction. A bomb is a package containing the reagents necessary for a highly energetic reaction. A high-capacity battery is effectively a bomb, pretty much by definition.

These have not much to do with attempt at increasing power density, but everything to do with particle contamination during the manufacturing process.

> with all the Samsungs and Teslas catching fire, it rings true.

Are there really a lot of Samsungs catching fire though, in the grand scheme of things?

> "the higher capacity a battery is the more it resembles a bomb."

You mean like gasoline?

The lithium is also in the anode and cathode, the electricity is generated by lithium traveling from one to another through the electrolyte. The electrolyte is heavier and bulkier but is picked for the ability to let lithium get through without letting electrons get through. I guess you could call it a lithium solution since lithium passes through it to get between the anode and cathode.

The anode and cathode need to be electrically insulated from one another requiring a substantial gap, or else the battery will short out internally or self-discharge if the electrical resistance is too low. That's why it's so big. Of course, reducing that gap is a big area of research. Solid electrolytes in principle might be easier to do this with since they stay put, but stuff cracks when lithium concentrations go up and down. The materials literally swell with lithium at the nanometer scale and then break apart. It's pretty hard, you can't unfortunately just vapor deposit a thin film of a solid electrolyte on the cathode since the materials are a bit too fragile to maintain the electrical resistance required for it to work.

There has been an enormous amount work on battery technology for the last 30 years. Probably 99% of it leads to dead ends.

Standard rule of battery development, if everything goes right it takes ten years to market. And another ten to get market share. In the late 90's early 2000's there was paper after paper published on lithium iron phosphate batteries and dick all nothing for sale until ~2010. And ten years later market share is growing slowly.

Well, the power of a battery the size of a brick in the 80’s is now available in a AA form factor. I’d say the improvement has been profound, if not quite as profound as Moore’s law is for CPUs.

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In the parlance of this space, energy density usually means specific energy. "Volumetric energy density" is the term normally used if research is highlighting a material that achieves high energy-per-liter storage from its high specific gravity.

"Typically, FeF3∙3H2O and CoF3 were ball milled at a molar ratio of 9:1 for 30 min to reduce the particle size and get a homogeneous reactant mixture. Then, 170 mg of such mixture was dispersed in 1-propanol (75 ml) and stirred vigorously at room temperature for half an hour. The resulting suspension was transferred into a Teflon-lined 100 ml stainless-steel autoclave reactor, and subsequently sealed and heated at 210 °C for 24 h in an oven. For comparison, FeOF was also synthesized by the same procedure using pure FeF3∙3H2O as the starting material dispersed in butyl-alcohol. FeF3 was prepared by ball milling the as-purchased FeF3 for 6 h. The pre-lithiation of Fe0.9Co0.1OF is synthesized by ball milling Fe0.9Co0.1OF and LiH at a molar ratio of 1:2 for 10 h."

This is standard ceramic slurry processing, they mix the powders with some liquid and then heat the two ceramics together to do a solid state reaction. I am somewhat impressed that the reaction went suitably at 210C, but that's not particularly hot. I'd think that the raw material costs would dominate here.

EDIT: Ball milling is when you spin a jar on rollers with the ceramic powder and big teflon beads that crush it gradually over a long period of time. It can be done dry or wet, but it's not a fancy procedure.

Consider the energy density of a cup of water when viewed as fuel for fusion reactions.

Won't it always be an issue? I have a feeling they'll just put in more and better power-hungry hardware and software and we'll be back in the minimally acceptable battery life range.

I think the issue is still all the background activity. My phone (moto x pure) lasts multiple days in airplane+battery saver mode. It was 30% charged after using it for GPS/maps and occasional music on a 4-day backpacking (hiking) trip.

Put the battery we have now into a Nokia flip phone from the 90s. It’ll probably run for weeks.

This is not nastiness like pure fluorine or hydrofluoric acid, but a salt. It may be somewhat toxic, but it does not require extraordinary handling precautions.

...and yet sodium fluoride is a component of common toothpaste. Manufacturers of sodium chloride (table salt) don't work with chlorine, either.