Know Better Solid State Battery
We take a lot of the technology around us today for granted.
Like many computers for phones that last the entire day which was unheard of.
Not too long ago, but what if your phone lasted three to four days on a charge.
Or a laptop that can be pushed to the limits for an entire day without needing to be plugged in at all.
Or an eevee that can go 5 to 600 miles and charge in minutes and cost less than an internal-combustion engine car state batteries for years now.
But where do things stand today and how much start seeing solid state batteries in the technologies that we use every single day.
Excitement around solid state batteries is understandable with companies like Toyota teasing a solid state battery.
Vehicle around the time of the winter olympics.
The buzz continues to grow the lithium-ion batteries that we use today.
As great as they are, have some drawbacks that solid state is trying to solve and to understand those drawbacks.
We need to look at the basic components of a battery there's a positive electrode or cathode.
Which is usually something like a nickel cobalt aluminum formula.
And there's a perforated separator to keep it isolated from the negative side or anode which is usually a compound of a carbon material like graphite.
Finally all of this will be filled with a liquid electrolyte that allows the free flow of ions back and forth between the anode and cathode during charging and discharging.
You can substitute many chemical formulations for the cathode and the anode.
But the liquid or gel electrolytes and most of the batteries that we use today are highly combustible.
This can happen because of manufacturing defects or damage to the cell.
But it's also a problem because of something called dendrites metal can build up in the anode and slowly create stalactite.
Like growths and those can extend and puncture the separator between the anode and the cathode and that's when you get exploding batteries.
So how does a solid-state battery solve that problem.
They replaced the liquid electrolyte with you probably guessed it that's most often a ceramic or glassy electrolyte.
Now these salad electrolytes aren't flammable.
Which means a big improvement with safety but a bigger benefit of solid electrolytes is.
The ability to use other anode materials like lithium metal which has the highest theoretical storage capacity.
In fact lithium metal was used in some of the first lithium-ion battery research in 1979.
However one of the reasons we haven't used lithium metal and batteries up until this point is because they suffer from dendrite growth.
Which is as I mentioned before kind of a bad thing there's been a lot of really interesting research in recent years that may have solutions to that problem though.
Mit researchers have developed something called mixed ionic electronic conductors or miec.
An electron and lithium ion insulators or li now that's a mouthful.
It's a three dimensional honeycomb architecture with nanoscale tubes made from miec and the tubes are infused with lithium metal.
Which forms the anode the fascinating part of this breakthrough.
Is that the honeycomb pattern gives the lithium metal room to expand and contract during charging and discharging.
Giving the battery room to breathe avoids cracking and that li coating the tubes acts as a barrier protecting them from the solid electrolyte.
Now all of this means having a true solid-state battery without the need for any liquid or gel mixed in and no dendrite growth.
A company called ion storage systems has developed a super thin ceramic electrolyte that's about 10 micrometers thick.
Which is about the same thickness as today's plastic separators used in liquid electrolytes.
Now each side of the ceramic electrolyte is covered in a super thin layer of aluminum oxide.
That helps to reduce resistance the company's prototype battery had a specific energy of 300 watt hours per kilogram and is capable of charging in five to ten minutes.
For a point of comparison today's commercial lithium ion batteries can do about 250 watt hours per kilogram.
Ibm and daimler announced a breakthrough cells day battery that used ibm's quantum computing on a battery chemistry that uses no heavy metals such as nickel or cobalt.
And that aren't extracted in damaging ways but unlike other big breakthrough announcements they provide no details that can be explained or corroborate.
All we know is what they've told us and it's very vague like that it can supposedly charge to 80% in five minutes and match the energy density of state-of-the-art lithium batteries.
This skepticism due to the lack of details but one announcement which is the biggest of them all.
It's back to the legendary rock star of the battery technologies himself and nobel prize winner John B Goodenough together with his co-author Maria Elena Braga.
They announced a glass battery at 97 years old John Goodenough is still researching battery chemistry is to replace lithium-ion batteries with something better faster safer and ecologically.
Sound something that would be cheaper than gas.
And would push humanity off the need to use fossil fuels.
Both Maria Braga and John Goodenough think they've unlocked that potential with their discovery.
At some point as you probably guessed from the nickname it's using a glass electrolyte.
They can last for more than 23,000 charge and discharge cycles which is more than a minor improvement over several thousand.
For a typical lithium-ion cell now there's still some debate from battery researchers around good enough and broca's findings but goodness.
Credentials as one of the inventors of the lithium-ion battery add a lot of credibility to the findings.
Now this all leads me to the giant question of win when will we finally see the solid state batteries hit the market.
We've heard of promises of solid state battery breakthroughs for years.
But have yet to see them in a while and that's part of why I selected some of the examples that I did like the ibm example when it comes to news reports and public perception.
There's a disconnect between research and breakthroughs in the lab versus when it becomes commercialized.
In the marketplace there's often the perception that'll be a product within a year or two.
Which is actually something ibm stated in their announcement they partnered with mercedes-benz r&d north america, a japanese chemical company called central glass, and a battery startup called sidess to test the battery.
A direct quote from an interview with oee spectrum said ibm has built prototype pouch battery cells in the lab.
Example, portable power tools within one to two years.
One to two years that's exciting unless you pay attention to the specifics of limited applications like portable power tools.
This isn't something that's going to be an evs anytime soon.
Sadly some companies perpetuate this misperception on purpose to appear as though they're relevant and competitive in the marketplace.
At ces this year mercedes showed off their avatar concept car which is made of environmentally friendly materials and a cutting-edge battery pack.
That's fully recyclable that got a lot of headlines.
But in an interview with mercedes senior manager of battery research he stated that the battery technology is currently in lab testing and about 10 to 15 years away.
I just recently had a video about catl and their prismatic cell 2-pack technology that tesla may be using soon.
Well catl also produce a solid-state battery sample.
But said it wouldn't be commercialized until after 2030.
Now I don't bring all of this up to squash the excitement around the research.
Breakthroughs with solid-state batteries it's important to keep things in context and understand.
That it's incredibly difficult to go from lab to manufacturing at scale cost-effectively.
Remember that it was over a decade between the original lithium-ion battery research and sony producing the first commercially available version.
And even John Goodenough thinks it's going to be five to ten years before solid-state batteries will become commercially successful.
Even Toyota's planned solid state vehicle announcement around the time of the olympics is another good indicator.
Toyota's r&d chief has said "We will produce a car with solid state batteries and unveil it to you in 2020.
But mass production with cells state batteries will be a little later, and by a little later he means mid 2020s at the earliest.
We're a giant middle step of solid state research, which is trying to apply what has been learned in the lab to real-world".
Production in limited situations, John Goodenough is doing that with hydro-quebec.
The university of texas at austin owns the patents to the glass battery.
But is working with hydro-quebec to try to commercialize the technology.
Will know whether a product can be manufactured and how such a product might perform compared to existing lithium-ion battery cells.
We're most likely going to see solid-state battery technology hit the market in small batches in very limited ways.
The difficulty in manufacturing yields and costs will mean it's most likely going to be used at small form factors.
Like consumer electronics think smart phones and smart watches as the processing chemistry's get perfected.
We'll start to see it in larger scale products.
I wouldn't be surprised if John Goodenough prediction is accurate and that we'll see the first batteries in five years or so.
But we're most likely a decade away before it starts to make significant inroads.
Once it does it's gonna change everything again everything.
We know and expect out of consumer electronics health technology and ev's will shift.
We'll be able to charge phones and cars in minutes instead of hours.
I'm really excited to see where solid-state batteries can take us in the future for the time being.
We'll just need to be a little bit patien