Stanford researchers seek 'Holy Grail' in battery design(news.stanford.edu)
news.stanford.edu
Stanford researchers seek 'Holy Grail' in battery design
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/july/pure-lithium-battery-072914.html
5 comments
The head researcher here, Yi Cui, is a pretty baller dude. I met him at a PhD admit visitation weekend, and his group was the most popular by far. Some of the admitted students joked that competition to get into his group was harder than getting into Stanford in the first place.
I suspect that his research success is partly due to some snowball effect though - he has an extraordinary amount of postdocs working for him and access to a lot of money/equipment - which are both pretty great assets to have in engineering (and tend to grow as a function of present size).
Anyway, not to take away from the research he's doing. A lot of the stuff he puts out is very cool; I look forward to seeing more.
I suspect that his research success is partly due to some snowball effect though - he has an extraordinary amount of postdocs working for him and access to a lot of money/equipment - which are both pretty great assets to have in engineering (and tend to grow as a function of present size).
Anyway, not to take away from the research he's doing. A lot of the stuff he puts out is very cool; I look forward to seeing more.
>"Of all the materials that one might use in an anode, lithium has the greatest potential. Some call it the Holy Grail," said Yi Cui, a Stanford professor of materials science and engineering and leader of the research team. "It is very lightweight and it has the highest energy density. You get more power per volume and weight, leading to lighter, smaller batteries with more power."
while it is theoretically true, the lithium is only part of the whole weight. The metals of the same group - potassium or sodium (though sodium seems to have more issues than potassium) anode looks order of magnitude easier (on the order of Al anodes while still being rechargeable) and provide almost the close to lithium perf/weight when whole battery is considered.
while it is theoretically true, the lithium is only part of the whole weight. The metals of the same group - potassium or sodium (though sodium seems to have more issues than potassium) anode looks order of magnitude easier (on the order of Al anodes while still being rechargeable) and provide almost the close to lithium perf/weight when whole battery is considered.
Sweet, partner with any battery manufacturer, Tesla, or the US military and lets get this technology fast-tracked. Higher density batteries can't come soon enough.
Fast track what? Per the article this research still has a long way to go both in terms of efficiency but more in terms of recharge cycles before it is even near usable. It isn't even on level with Lithium Ion batteries yet.
Even if the US military and Tesla got behind this who are they going to bring in to help? This Stanford team is near the best we have right now (if not the absolute best).
Now when they're producing batteries which are better than what is already available on the market AND are near as safe (if you can call current Lithium Ion batteries "safe") then, sure, fast track away.
Even if the US military and Tesla got behind this who are they going to bring in to help? This Stanford team is near the best we have right now (if not the absolute best).
Now when they're producing batteries which are better than what is already available on the market AND are near as safe (if you can call current Lithium Ion batteries "safe") then, sure, fast track away.
The article says that they've made significant breakthroughs and have solved some of the problems but there are still a few that they are working on.
The ones that are already solved need methods of mass-production, which requires funding and highly skilled researchers. Get a team together under the researchers to work on every part of this battery problem so that when all of the aspects of the advanced battery are figured out it's ready to be mass-produced as soon as possible. I'm not sure, just anything at all to increase the speed of this work.
Sure, being the best matters a lot, but it's also about trying numerous methods and having different approaches and specialties. Going from the lab to mass-production is something that the researchers in the article can't focus on if they are still working on other parts of the battery. I'm sure there are people who would be willing to help, but not for free.
The ones that are already solved need methods of mass-production, which requires funding and highly skilled researchers. Get a team together under the researchers to work on every part of this battery problem so that when all of the aspects of the advanced battery are figured out it's ready to be mass-produced as soon as possible. I'm not sure, just anything at all to increase the speed of this work.
Sure, being the best matters a lot, but it's also about trying numerous methods and having different approaches and specialties. Going from the lab to mass-production is something that the researchers in the article can't focus on if they are still working on other parts of the battery. I'm sure there are people who would be willing to help, but not for free.
> Get a team together under the researchers to work on every part of this battery problem
That sounds like what is already happening. This is a well funded well staffed lab we are talking about.
That sounds like what is already happening. This is a well funded well staffed lab we are talking about.
This begs the followup question, "What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen Tesla?"
What do you mean? An X or S model?
This in HN. No references please.
But then the X model's not yet in manufacture.
If you're curious, the material I'm using consists of an all-carbon anode with crystalline and amorphous domains. It performs about the same as current state of the art Li-ion battery anodes; however, the cost of manufacturing is incredibly cheap since the composite material is derived from low-cost plant matter (lignin). Plus, it lasts for many more charge-discharge cycles (well, there's actually a trade-off between capacity and cycling performance; you have to pick a middle-ground).
I'm performing reactive molecular dynamics simulations on computational models of these new composite systems to try and understand why they have such high performance. It's pretty cool work really.