Battery Technology

By Rachel Berkowitz Membranes that allow certain molecules to quickly pass through while blocking others are key enablers for energy technologies from batteries and fuel cells to resource refinement and water purification. For example, membranes in a battery separating the two terminals help to prevent short circuits, while also allowing the transport of charged particles,…

By Glenn Roberts Jr. An X-ray instrument at Berkeley Lab contributed to a battery study that used an innovative approach to machine learning to speed up the learning curve about a process that shortens the life of fast-charging lithium batteries. Researchers used Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source, a synchrotron that produces light ranging from the…

By David L. Chandler | MIT News Office The cost of the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries used for phones, laptops and cars has fallen dramatically over the last three decades and has been a major driver of the rapid growth of those technologies. But attempting to quantify that cost decline has produced ambiguous and conflicting results…

Engineers at Southwest Research Institute are using internal research funds to tackle challenges with fast charging to reduce the time needed to recharge electric vehicles (EVs). As electric vehicles gain popularity, consumers expect the switch to battery-reliant platforms to be seamless, with the same acceleration, performance and comfort of vehicles powered by fossil fuels. For…

 By Chris Adam, Purdue Research Foundation If you want power, you lose battery life. If you want battery life, you lose power. That’s the situation facing users of most electronic devices – and it’s also the dilemma for electronics manufacturers. Purdue University innovators have come up with an invention to help. “Battery life technology, for…

Written by David L. Chandler, MIT News Office As researchers push the boundaries of battery design, seeking to pack ever greater amounts of power and energy into a given amount of space or weight, one of the more promising technologies being studied is lithium-ion batteries that use a solid electrolyte material between the two electrodes,…

A team led by Technical University of Munich (TUM) physicists Christoph Utschick and Prof. Rudolf Gross has succeeded in making a coil with superconducting wires capable of transmitting power on the order of more than five kilowatts contactless and with only small losses. The wide range of conceivable applications include autonomous industrial robots, medical equipment,…

Renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power, could help decrease the world’s reliance on fossil fuels. But first, power companies need a safe, cost-effective way to store the energy for later use. Massive lithium-ion batteries can do the job, but they suffer from safety issues and limited lithium availability. Aqueous zinc-based batteries have…

Energy storage startup SPARKZ has exclusively licensed a battery cycling technology from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory designed to enable the rapid production of lithium-ion batteries commonly used in portable electronic devices and electric vehicles. ORNL’s technology, called fast formation cycling, reduces production time significantly and also enhances battery performance, which can…

A team of researchers led by chemists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory has identified new details of the reaction mechanism that takes place in batteries with lithium metal anodes. The findings, published today in Nature Nanotechnology, are a major step towards developing smaller, lighter and less expensive batteries for electric…

Rising demand for lithium batteries with higher energy density and improved safety requires a paradigm shift in material selection and battery configuration. The most likely successor to the lithium ion battery will be a solid-state battery that uses non-flammable solid electrolytes paired with a lithium metal anode.  The construction and composition of Solid Lithium Battery…

The Cobalt-Free Cathode Material, developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for use in lithium-ion batteries, is made with nickel, iron and aluminum in the place of cobalt, which is significantly more expensive. The novel cathode has performance equivalent to the mainstream cobalt-containing cathodes used in today’s lithium-ion batteries. Manufacturing of the new cobalt-free cathode will…

Supercapacitors, also known as ultracapacitors, have performance characteristics somewhere between a battery and a conventional capacitor. A battery has a high energy density, meaning it can store a significant amount of energy with a relatively small volume or mass. Batteries are, however, limited in terms of the speed at which they can charge or discharge,…

Joint research by Toyota Central R&D Labs and DENSO Corp. has developed a new Deep Sub-Micron Process MOSFET for a new Li-ion battery management IC. Although the new IC size is only one-third of the size of a conventional IC, it can monitor battery cells with 1.2x higher capacity than the conventional IC. Development of…

By Jennifer J Burke, ORNL Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have developed a new family of cathodes with the potential to replace the costly cobalt-based cathodes typically found in today’s lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles and consumer electronics. The new class called NFA, which stands for nickel-, iron- and aluminum-based cathode, is a derivative…

National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s all-perovskite tandem technology could open up an entirely new solar-energy application: vehicles powered directly by photovoltaics (PV). No previous PV technology achieves the combined flexibility, low cost and high specific power needed for PV-powered vehicles. All-perovskite tandems have a specific power 10x higher than flexible PV technologies of similar cost, and…

Group14 Technologies, a global provider of silicon-carbon composite materials for lithium-ion markets, today announced it has secured $17 million in Series B funding led by SK Materials, a manufacturer of special gases and industrial gases, with participation from returning investor OVP Venture Partners. Group14 will use this operating capital to scale production to meet the…

In the ongoing quest to build a better battery, researchers used the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan to identify the potential of using polymer composites as electrode matrices to increase the capacity of rechargeable lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries. “The composition of the adhesive and conductive framework for batteries hasn’t changed in years,”…

New York State today announced the unveiling of a new energy storage project that uses an innovation in lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery technology. The success of this project will demonstrate the safety and use of commercial energy storage systems that could enable more integration of renewable energy resources into the grid. Located at the New York…

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Flow-Through Microelectrode Cell for Precision Electroanalytical Chemistry provides the simplest, fastest, most affordable, precise and comprehensive tool for analyzing electrochemical systems that employ solid electrolytes. Because of its cost and performance advantages, this testing innovation can accelerate development of electrochemical technologies that meet critical global needs, particularly electrical energy storage and…

Engineers at Southwest Research Institute were able to interfere with the charging process of an electric vehicle (EV) by simulating a malicious attack as part of an automotive cybersecurity research initiative. The SwRI team reverse-engineered the signals and circuits on an EV and a J1772 charger, the most common interface for managing EV charging in…

Since Sony commercialized the first lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) containing organic liquid electrolytes in 1991, LIBs have been widely used in portable electronic devices and more recently in vehicles. However, as the energy density and/or size of cells increases, LIBs have incurred safety concerns due to volatile and flammable organic liquid electrolytes. Therefore, the world is…

The insatiable demand for portable power, from handheld electronics to electric vehicles, continues to drive materials innovations for Lithium-Ion Batteries (LIBs). Current inorganic cathodes in LIBs have peaked in performance, yet still suffer from low capacity and energy density, limited structural versatility, environmental pollution and safety risks which have created hurdles in the consumer marketplace.…

By Diana Anderson Vehicles powered by polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) are energy-efficient and eco-friendly, but despite increasing public interest in PEMFC-powered transportation, current performance of materials that are used in fuel cells limits their widespread commercialization. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory led a team to investigate reactions…

Electric vehicles are expected to include solid-state batteries as an innovative approach, according to IDTechEx’s research report “Solid-State and Polymer Batteries 2020-2030: Technology, Patents, Forecasts, Players”. The mature lithium-ion battery technology has its intrinsic limitations Since commercialized in 1991, lithium-ion batteries have received a worldwide success. However, this cannot hide their intrinsic limitations in terms…