Battery Technology

By Mollie Rappe, Sandia News Media Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have designed a new class of molten sodium batteries for grid-scale energy storage. The new battery design was shared in a paper published today in the scientific journal Cell Reports Physical Science. Molten sodium batteries have been used for many years to store energy…

News provided by Group14 Technologies Group14 Technologies, a provider of silicon-carbon composite materials for lithium-ion markets, announces a joint venture with SK materials, manufacturer of special gases and industrial gases, to build a factory for lithium-silicon battery materials in South Korea. The joint venture is the latest development for Group14 to secure dual sourcing for…

By Troy Rummler, Sandia National Laboratory For decades, scientists have tried to make reliable lithium-metal batteries. These high-performance storage cells hold 50% more energy than their prolific, lithium-ion cousins, but higher failure rates and safety problems like fires and explosions have crippled commercialization efforts. Researchers have hypothesized why the devices fail, but direct evidence has…

By Stephanie G Seay, ORNL Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers demonstrated their wireless charging technology on an autonomous electric vehicle for the first time in a project with Local Motors. The charging system developed at ORNL was installed on Local Motors’ autonomous shuttle, the Olli. The architecture includes both wireless and wired charging, so the…

Southwest Research Institute has launched a new Joint Industry Program (JIP) to investigate energy storage systems for the grid. JIP efforts will include developing new test cycles for batteries employed in grid applications, estimating the life span of batteries and their potential for failure, and reducing likelihood of battery fires. “I’m delighted that the Institute…

by Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology The fabrication device for the battery revolution looks quite inconspicuous: It is a modified, commercially available 3D printer, located in a room in the Empa laboratory building. But the real innovation lies within the recipe for the gelatinous inks this printer can dispense onto a…

By Stephanie Kossman A team of researchers led by chemists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory has studied an elusive property in cathode materials, called a valence gradient, to understand its effect on battery performance. The findings, published in Nature Communications, demonstrated that the valence gradient can serve as a new…

“We are looking at the solution, but most of the time we forget the problem”. The energy scenario is changing as a result of years of green policies adopted by major countries in the world. With energy storage playing a key role toward the integration of variable renewable energy (VRE) in the power grid, will…

TWAICE, a battery analytics software company that enhances transparency and predictability of batteries, announced it has raised $26 million in Series B funding. Led by global alternative investment manager Energize Ventures, including help from participating investors brought TWAICE’s total financing to $45 million. The funds will be used to expand core capabilities such as the…

Cambridge Quantum Computing (CQC) has partnered with the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luftund Raumfahrt; DLR) to explore how quantum computing could help create better simulation models for battery development to aid future energy utilization. The collaboration will see DLR – the national aeronautics and space research center of the Federal Republic of Germany…

Early this year Energy Exploration Technologies (EnergyX) secured commitments of $20 million in financing, for direct lithium extraction (DLE) technology. Based in the US, EnergyX is a technology company that is focused on delivering the latest scientific innovations in sustainable lithium extraction methods and solid-state battery energy storage systems. This funding also makes EnergyX the…

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…