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Comment by jokoon | Hacker News Reader

At this point any submission related to battery tech research should be removed.

The nature of science is disappointment, no? Maybe this will work... Nope. Maybe this other way? Nope.

Now and again there's an actual advance and we rejoice, but if you keep an eye on cutting edge stuff it's got to happen a lot that some promising lead leads nowhere.

Reporting could be delayed until the advance happens. Even better if I can buy it in a store at that point.

I'll take "How we end up with scientists running around in circles making the same mistakes over and over." for $500.

If you goal is to learn about things once they're stable and working, I suggest drop reading science journalism from your schedule and just start window shopping at electronics stores.

OK, I was thinking more of summaries of summaries of university news portal announcements on tech sites (which this one is not). I am not against academic publications, scientists should definitely be acquainted with what is happening in their field.

>Electrochemical characterization and post-mortem spectroscopy/ microscopy studies on cycled cells reveal an altered redox mechanism that reversibly converts monoclinic sulfur to Li2 S without the formation of intermediate polysulfides for the entire range of 4000 cycles. The development of unconfined high loading sulfur cathodes in Li–S batteries employing carbonate- based electrolytes can revolutionize the field of high energy density practical batteries.

[italics mine]

These are bold claims. You don't hear that every day. Polysulfides have been an accepted fact of life in Li-S batteries forever.

Why? I haven’t seen a silver bullet yet, but I always learn something new

I think GP's point is that Li-Ion batteries were state of the art 15 years ago, and they still are today. And they aren't much better either, they still degrade from normal use and still expand if you look at them wrong. Except 15 years ago they at least were designed to be easily replaceable.

This is a Li-Ion battery because Lithium isn’t one single technology it’s a family of batteries that use Lithium.

So lithium titanate, lithium cobalt, lithium manganese oxide, nickel cobalt manganese(NCM), nickel cobalt manganese Aluminum(NCMA), lithium iron phosphate(LFP), and now lithium sulfer are all related but they have very different trade offs. 15 years ago Li-Ion battery tech meant worse trade offs so fewer charge cycles, slower charging, less energy per charge, more costly etc etc.

And yes, NCM and NCMA both use lithium.

Li-ion has made tremendous advances in that time. This article[0] goes through some of the history.

Some hot takes:

- Price per cell has dropped ~97% since 1991

- 1991 energy density ~200 Wh/liter; 2005 energy density ~500 Wh/liter; 2017 ~700 Wh/liter

[0]: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/ee/d0ee0...

As Xoa posted in another branch, it’s not true that batteries aren’t much better in the last 15 years. Lithium Ion is not a single type of battery but a category of batteries with many types, each with their own benefits and challenges. Numerous changes have been made to the anode and cathodes to improve stability, power capacity, recharge cycles and cost. Recent efforts have focuses on reducing or removing cobalt. Capacity has grown about 5% per year and general stability has improved. I remember reading articles like this years ago where they talked about using LFP cathodes to improve the stability of batteries. Today LFP batteries are used in some Teslas and probably other vehicles.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/05/eternally-five-years...

The cynicism for battery teach research is misplaced. In our lifetimes we have seen real enormous strides in battery technology actually go into production. LFP batteries are now in actual Teslas, provider a cheaper/safer/simpler option for lower range cars that depend on fewer exotic materials/mining. Sodium batteries are in the pipeline. Sulfur batteries may or may not make it too.

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