Why are lithium ion batteries still on the market?

According to foreign media reports, lithium batteries have successfully entered everyone's life since their birth in the 1970s, but in an era of rapid technological progress, there is no new energy storage technology to replace their status, which makes people think. What kind of difficulties have researchers been having?

Earlier this year, Williams, head of the Department of Energy's Alternative Energy Advanced Research Program (ARPA-E), grabbed headlines overnight. And what got him so much attention was only a sentence from an interview with the Guardian: "We have made a huge breakthrough in the battery field. "

There has been no breakthrough in battery technology

However, the breakthrough is a breakthrough, but it is still unknown when it can be used. Prior to this, ARPA-E has supported more than 75 research projects related to energy storage. They have achieved some satisfactory results, but there has been no breakthrough in the production of small-volume, low-cost energy storage equipment.

Despite efforts, many start-ups are close to producing an energy storage device that integrates economic, security, compact, and high-energy density, and can reduce its cost to $100 per kilowatt-hour. However, if the price of energy storage equipment is controlled at this level, it will inevitably lead to an electric couple corrosion effect (the so-called electric couple corrosion effect refers to the local corrosion at the contact point of heterogeneous metals in the same medium due to different corrosion potentials).

Only renewable energy can solve this problem. They can make electric cars lighter and cheaper. But there is one slot that it can not overcome. It is that renewable energy is only stable when the sun is shining or the wind is raging.

Unfortunately, the commercialization of such new batteries lags far behind the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Even if it were bold, Mr. Musk would have to admit that current electric-car makers have not made much progress in improving lithium-ion batteries.

You break through your mind.

In fact, many researchers believe that energy storage devices need to break through existing barriers and adopt a completely new chemical process and physical shape for leapfrogging. Only in this way can the existing architecture be removed and the dominance achieved over the past decade in areas such as consumer electronics, electric cars and net-level storage systems be broken.

In May, the US Department of Energy hosted its ninth annual symposium on "Beyond lithium batteries", which brought researchers together each year to discuss the technical challenges of developing new energy storage devices.

Huqichao, founder of Solid Energy Systems, has created a new lithium metal battery that has significantly increased the energy density of the battery, greatly surpassing existing products.

Huqichao also described the history of the development of new lithium metal batteries at the seminar. He believes that the most important obstacle encountered during the research and development process of more than a decade is how to turn an idea into a product. This is even more difficult for the battery, because once you improve one aspect of performance, it may affect the other. Therefore, difficult trade-offs and choices must be made.

Serious underfunding of research and development

In addition, energy storage research also faces a thorny problem of multiplicity: battery technology is currently in full swing, and foam batteries, fluid batteries, and chemical batteries all have their own loyal fans. So no one knows what kind of battery will eventually be the big winner, causing research funding to spread.

According to research firm LuxResearch, the energy storage sector has absorbed more than $4 billion in investment over the past eight years, but start-ups with roots in the sector have received an average of $40 million in funding. Tesla, on the other hand, received $5 billion for a super plant, a gap that could not be bridged in the short term.

Xideer, professor of materials science at the University of California, Berkeley, said: "building a complete small production line will cost about $500 million, and you will have to optimize the details. Moreover, it will take years to test the battery system to win over carmakers. This is an impossible task for a company that can only get $5 million in investment each year. "

Even if manufacturers can finally bring new technologies to market, they will still face difficulties in expanding production and finding buyers. The previous Leyden Energy and A123 systems were the best negative materials. Although they were holding new technology, they failed due to insufficient funds and unsatisfactory demand. In addition, two startups, Seeo and Sakti3, have become unlucky, and they were acquired at a low price before the new battery was mass-produced.

For now, the world's three battery giants, Samsung, LG and Panasonic, have also changed their strategy, becoming more conservative and prone to improvements in existing technologies rather than a radical battery revolution. What's more, battery startups have a problem they don't want to mention: lithium-ion batteries haven't stopped evolving since they were born. If the old man can't keep up, why start a new era?

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