A multinational research team led by Army scientists successfully induced a controlled release of stored isotopic energy using a physical effect involving atomic electrons that was proposed more than 40 years ago but never before demonstrated experimentally.Scientists said this significant scientific achievement marks a step in the Army's quest to find and access alternative energy sources far beyond those possible with chemicals for new types of batteries.
It looks like Tesla is about to change the battery game – this time by installing more energy storage capacity in 2016 with SolarCity alone than all of the USA installed in 2015. In a recent filing with the SEC, it was found that Tesla foresees an almost 10X increase in sales to SolarCity for behind the meter storage.
100k Cycles and Beyond: Extraordinary Cycle Stability for MnO2 Nanowires Imparted by a Gel Electrolyte
Authors:
Thai et al
Abstract:
We demonstrate reversible cycle stability for up to 200 000 cycles with 94–96% average Coulombic efficiency for symmetrical δ-MnO2 nanowire capacitors operating across a 1.2 V voltage window in a poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) gel electrolyte. The nanowires investigated here have a Au@δ-MnO2 core@shell architecture in which a central gold nanowire current collector is surrounded by an electrodeposited layer of δ-MnO2 that has a thickness of between 143 and 300 nm. Identical capacitors operating in the absence of PMMA (propylene carbonate (PC), 1.0 M LiClO4) show dramatically reduced cycle stabilities ranging from 2000 to 8000 cycles. In the liquid PC electrolyte, the δ-MnO2 shell fractures, delaminates, and separates from the gold nanowire current collector. These deleterious processes are not observed in the PMMA electrolyte.
Scientists at Nanyang Technology University (NTU) have developed ultra-fast charging batteries that can be recharged up to 70 per cent in only two minutes.
The new generation batteries also have a long lifespan of over 20 years, more than 10 times compared to existing lithium-ion batteries.
This breakthrough has a wide-ranging impact on all industries, especially for electric vehicles, where consumers are put off by the long recharge times and its limited battery life.
With this new technology by NTU, drivers of electric vehicles could save tens of thousands on battery replacement costs and can recharge their cars in just a matter of minutes.
Commonly used in mobile phones, tablets, and in electric vehicles, rechargeable lithium-ion batteries usually last about 500 recharge cycles. This is equivalent to two to three years of typical use, with each cycle taking about two hours for the battery to be fully charged.
In the new NTU-developed battery, the traditional graphite used for the anode (negative pole) in lithium-ion batteries is replaced with a new gel material made from titanium dioxide.
Titanium dioxide is an abundant, cheap and safe material found in soil. It is commonly used as a food additive or in sunscreen lotions to absorb harmful ultraviolet rays.
Naturally found in spherical shape, the NTU team has found a way to transform the titanium dioxide into tiny nanotubes, which is a thousand times thinner than the diameter of a human hair. This speeds up the chemical reactions taking place in the new battery, allowing for superfast charging.
Invented by Associate Professor Chen Xiaodong from NTU’s School of Materials Science and Engineering, the science behind the formation of the new titanium dioxide gel was published in the latest issue of Advanced Materials, a leading international scientific journal in materials science.
Prof Chen and his team will be applying for a Proof-of-Concept grant to build a large-scale battery prototype. With the help of NTUitive, a wholly-owned subsidiary of NTU set up to support NTU start-ups, the patented technology has already attracted interest from the industry.
The technology is currently being licensed by a company for eventual production. Prof Chen expects that the new generation of fast-charging batteries will hit the market in the next two years. It also has the potential to be a key solution in overcoming longstanding power issues related to electro-mobility.
“Electric cars will be able to increase their range dramatically, with just five minutes of charging, which is on par with the time needed to pump petrol for current cars,” added Prof Chen.
“Equally important, we can now drastically cut down the toxic waste generated by disposed batteries, since our batteries last ten times longer than the current generation of lithium-ion batteries.”
The 10,000-cycle life of the new battery also mean that drivers of electric vehicles would save on the cost of battery replacements, which could cost over US$5,000 each.
Imagine being able to carry all the juice you needed to power your MP3 player, smartphone and electric car in the fabric of your jacket?
Sounds like science fiction, but it may become a reality thanks to breakthrough technology developed at a University of Central Florida research lab.
So far electrical cables are used only to transmit electricity. However, nanotechnology scientist and professor Jayan Thomas and his Ph.D. student Zenan Yu have developed a way to both transmit and store electricity in a single lightweight copper wire.
Their work is the focus of the cover story of the June 30 issue of the material science journal Advanced Materials and science magazine, Nature has published a detailed discussion about this technology in the current issue.
"It's a very interesting idea," Thomas said. "When we did it and started talking about it, everyone we talked to said, "Hmm, never thought of that. It's unique.'"
Copper wire is the starting point but eventually, Thomas said, as the technology improves, special fibers could also be developed with nanostructures to conduct and store energy.
More immediate applications could be seen in the design and development of electrical vehicles, space-launch vehicles and portable electronic devices. By being able to store and conduct energy on the same wire, heavy, space-consuming batteries could become a thing of the past. It is possible to further miniaturize the electronic devices or the space that has been previously used for batteries could be used for other purposes. In the case of launch vehicles, that could potentially lighten the load, making launches less costly, Thomas said.
Tesla is on a roll right now, with 14,000 of its all-electric Model S luxury sedan on the road and its stock at record highs.
If it achieves its planned production levels--21,000 cars this year, perhaps 40,000 by 2015--its voracious appetite for lithium-ion battery cells will only increase.
The massive scale of cell purchases by Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] has already boosted global production levels.
It may soon use as many '18650' lithium-ion cells itself as the entire industry produced before the Model S went into production a year ago.
But ensuring adequate battery supplies in sufficient time to expand car production is absolutely key to continuing Tesla's growth.
3D printing can now be used to print lithium-ion microbatteries the size of a grain of sand. The printed microbatteries could supply electricity to tiny devices in fields from medicine to communications, including many that have lingered on lab benches for lack of a battery small enough to fit the device, yet provide enough stored energy to power them.
To make the microbatteries, a team based at Harvard University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign printed precisely interlaced stacks of tiny battery electrodes, each less than the width of a human hair.
"Not only did we demonstrate for the first time that we can 3D-print a battery, we demonstrated it in the most rigorous way," said Jennifer Lewis, Ph.D., senior author of the study, who is also the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and a Core Faculty Member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. Lewis led the project in her prior position at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in collaboration with co-author Shen Dillon, an Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering there.
The results will be published online on June 18 in the journal Advanced Materials.
Though they be but little, they are fierce. The most powerful batteries on the planet are only a few millimeters in size, yet they pack such a punch that a driver could use a cellphone powered by these batteries to jump-start a dead car battery – and then recharge the phone in the blink of an eye.
Developed by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the new microbatteries out-power even the best supercapacitors and could drive new applications in radio communications and compact electronics.
Led by William P. King, the Bliss Professor of mechanical science and engineering, the researchers published their results in the April 16 issue of Nature Communications.
“This is a whole new way to think about batteries,” King said. “A battery can deliver far more power than anybody ever thought. In recent decades, electronics have gotten small. The thinking parts of computers have gotten small. And the battery has lagged far behind. This is a microtechnology that could change all of that. Now the power source is as high-performance as the rest of it.”
With currently available power sources, users have had to choose between power and energy. For applications that need a lot of power, like broadcasting a radio signal over a long distance, capacitors can release energy very quickly but can only store a small amount. For applications that need a lot of energy, like playing a radio for a long time, fuel cells and batteries can hold a lot of energy but release it or recharge slowly.
“There’s a sacrifice,” said James Pikul, a graduate student and first author of the paper. “If you want high energy you can’t get high power; if you want high power it’s very difficult to get high energy. But for very interesting applications, especially modern applications, you really need both. That’s what our batteries are starting to do. We’re really pushing into an area in the energy storage design space that is not currently available with technologies today.”
The new microbatteries offer both power and energy, and by tweaking the structure a bit, the researchers can tune them over a wide range on the power-versus-energy scale.
