New “Micro-Batteries” Show Great Potential, Now The Most Powerful Batteries On The Planet

Clean Technica ^ | April 17, 2013 | "Nathan"

[Wonder Warthog]

Newly created “micro-batteries” that are only a few millimeters in size are now the most powerful batteries in the world. The new batteries, created by researchers at the University of Illinois, greatly out-power “even the best supercapacitors,” while being only a fraction of their size.

“The graphic illustrates a high power battery technology from the University of Illinois. Ions flow between three-dimensional micro-electrodes in a lithium ion battery.”

“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,” a University of Illinois press release put out yesterday noted.

Sounds like a potentially significant technological improvement. Such batteries could certainly have a use in electric vehicles, and as a means of renewable energy storage, if they can be produced cheaply enough.

“This is a whole new way to think about batteries,” said William P. King, University of Illinois professor of mechanical science and engineering. “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.”

What makes this new technology sound interesting though isn’t simply the increased power, it’s the potential for simultaneously possessing high power transmission and high energy storage. As of now, there’s a trade-off forced by technological limitations — it’s either one or the other, not both.

“There’s a sacrifice,” said James Pikul. “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.”

Some of the potential uses are certainly interesting: electronic devices as much as 30 times smaller, credit-card-thin cell phones that can recharge in a second, high-power lasers, portable high-power medical devices, etc.

What makes these batteries so much better than others? How did the researchers do it? I’ll let the University explain:

“The batteries owe their high performance to their internal three-dimensional microstructure. Batteries have two key components: the anode (minus side) and cathode (plus side). Building on a novel fast-charging cathode design by materials science and engineering professor Paul Braun’s group, King and Pikul developed a matching anode and then developed a new way to integrate the two components at the microscale to make a complete battery with superior performance.”

The researchers indicate that the batteries are indeed rechargeable and that they can charge approximately 1,000 times faster than competing technologies. That’s no incremental improvement, but we’ll see if they can bring the technology to market.

The researchers are currently working on developing a low-cost manufacturing paradigm for the technology.

The new technology is outlined in the April 16 issue of Nature Communications.

[thackney]

These huge advances stem from a brand new cathode and anode structure, pioneered by the University of Illinois researchers. In essence, a standard li-ion battery normally has a solid, two-dimensional anode made of graphite and a cathode made of a lithium salt. The new Illinois battery, on the other hand, has a porous, three-dimensional anode and cathode. To create this new electrode structure, the researchers build up a structure of polystyrene (Styrofoam) on a glass substrate, electrodeposit nickel onto the polystyrene, and then electrodeposit nickel-tin onto the anode and manganese dioxide onto the cathode. The diagram above does a good job of explaining the process.

The end result is that these porous electrodes have a massive surface area, allowing for more chemical reactions to take place in a given space, ultimately providing a massive boost to discharge speed (power output) and charging. So far, the researchers have used this tech to create a button-sized microbattery, and you can see in the graph below how well their battery compares to a conventional Sony CR1620 button cell. The energy density is slightly lower, but the power density is 2,000 times greater. On the opposite end of the bleeding-edge spectrum — increased energy density, but lower power density — then IBM’s lithium-air battery currently leads the pack.

Energy density vs. power density for a variety of battery technologies, including University of Illinois’ new microstructured anode/cathode li-ion battery

More at:
New lithium-ion battery design that’s 2,000 times more powerful, recharges 1,000 times faster
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/153614-new-lithium-ion-battery-design-thats-2000-times-more-powerful-recharges-1000-times-faster

[zeestephen]

Re: “I don’t want it in my pocket.”

Micro-batteries.....

The new Viagra!

[762X51]

Ahhhhhhh. This could probably power a shoulder fired rail gun. Remember I thought of it so I’m first in line!

[GOPJ]

“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,” a University of Illinois press release put out yesterday noted.

Ping

[Nowhere Man]

Actually the anode is the plus side and the cathode is the minus side. I caught that error and it makes me even more skeptical until proven.

[zeestephen]

Help me out with the vocabulary.

What’s the difference between “energy density” and “power density?”

Or, more simply, what’s the difference between “energy” and “power?”

[Boogieman]

[Boogieman]

Energy is the capacity to do work, power is the rate at which the work can be done.

[thackney]

Energy is energy

Power is power

;-)

If you were talking about a car, energy is the size of the fuel tank, power is the size of the engine.

Energy is power multiplied by time.

The same amount of energy can be a little power for a long time, or a lot of power for a little time.

[dangerdoc]

600 amps is easy, they don’t say how microseconds it will provide that amperage. A big capacitor can do it for a fraction of a second.

Of course, That little battery would require some really big terminals to keep from vaporizing.

[squarebarb]

What is W/H? Sorry, technically challenged.

[thackney]

Watts per Hour

[puppypusher]

Once the battery is installed in your cell phone you’ll never have to recharge the phone again.The phone will probably burst into flames like certain notebook pc’s have recently.

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

Bump for later

[uncommonsense]

"The Incredible Revolutionary Amazing Discovery of the Month! (To be not heard from ever again!)"

LOL! I hear ya... I love to read about "over the horizon" tech. But, I made a similar comment about a prominent N.E. company famous for making headline-grabbing announcements about "breakthrough" technology, only to say in the fine print that it won't be commercially available for the next 10 - 20 years. I won't mention their name since the FR attack dogs will come out in mass and I'm already inundated from proponents of statism.

Conversely, Apple likes to keep new tech close to the vest and only reveals it when the product in in the pipeline...

[uncommonsense]

These days, the price usually tanks after 1 or 2 years with global competition and production scaling up. The high end market (medical, military) usually adopts first, then production ramps up and prices fall. Think of new iPhones - price drops after 6 months and Apple doesn't have much perceived equivalents.

[MosesKnows]

I am skeptical

As am I.

I think we will find a misunderstanding of how the battery functions or a misstatement, which is more likely. The point may have been that if enough of these were stacked they could start an internal combustion engine.

Battery, microphone, and speaker technology has grown by leaps and bounds over the last decade but this would be an amazing leap.

[ro_dreaming]

Instead of bigger batteries, a metric crap-ton of smaller batteries that take no time to recharge, but with a large quantity of them, a long time to discharge. Interesting thought!

/didn’t read story yet, just my thoughts

[hattend]

What is it, antimatter?

Well, they have been trying to reverse engineer it since Roswell, 1947.

They may have finally succeeded.

[1010RD]

“the thermodynamic laws are hard to beat”

Yet in every generation of man there’s a sucker who tries.