Many of the most influential people of our time are also the most obscure. Take John Goodenough, for example. While he may not be a household name, everyday devices such as laptops and smartphones exist because of his work on lithium-ion batteries. But even in his 90s, Goodenough isn’t done yet. He’s already invented the lithium-ion’s nervous system, which houses the cobalt-oxide cathode. This is the most important part of every lithium-ion battery, but Goodenough isn’t satisfied with this major…
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A team from Japan’s Samsung R&D has worked in collaboration with researchers from the University of Rome to fabricate a novel all solid state Lithium-sulfur battery. The paper has been recently published in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society. (P.S. It’s Open Access! Read it here.) The battery’s capacity is around 1,600 mAhg⁻¹, which denotes an initial charge-discharge Coulombic efficiency approaching 99 percent. Additionally, the battery possesses such beneficial properties as the smooth stripping-deposition of lithium. In contrast to other…
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Researchers around the world are in a scientific race to develop a near-perfect lithium-ion battery, and a startup from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) may have just unlocked the secret. In 2012, Qichao Hu founded SolidEnergy – a startup that grew out of research and academics from MIT. Qichao started with battery technology that he and ECS member Donald Sadoway developed. Now, the company is claiming to have built a lithium-ion battery that could change battery technology as we…
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The “world’s most durable battery” has been continuously functioning since 1840 – and no one knows why this mysterious battery, commonly referred to as the Oxford Electric Bell, has lasted s long. It all begins at the London-based instrument-manufacturing firm Watkins and Hill, where the battery was manufactured with dry piles – one of the first forms of electric batteries developed by Giuseppe Zamboni in the early 19th century. In the mid-1800s, a physics professor got his hands on the…
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Scientists out of the University of Waterloo are one step closer to inventing a cheaper, lighter and more powerful rechargeable battery for electric vehicles. At the heart of this discovery lies a breakthrough in lithium-sulfur batteries due to an ultra-thin nanomaterial. This from the University of Waterloo: Their discovery of a material that maintains a rechargeable sulfur cathode helps to overcome a primary hurdle to building a lithium-sulfur (Li-S) battery. Such a battery can theoretically power an electric car three…
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The 2015 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is coming to a close, but not before showcasing a huge breakthrough in battery technology. The Israeli start-up company StoreDot showed off their new product at CES: a smartphone battery that can charge in just seconds. StoreDot’s battery charges 100 times faster than the present lithium-ion batteries and can last about five hours on a two minute charge. However, the battery cannot be retrofitted to existing devices because most phones would be fried by…
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