Who can be the "Savior"? Solid state batteries are also

According to China Business News, in the middle of this month, James Dyson, the inventor of vacuum cleaners and Dyson founder, invested his first $15 million investment in solid-state battery company Sakti3, the latter. Is a battery startup company founded in 2007.

According to Dyson, Sakti3's currently developed solid-state battery will have a energy density of 1,100 WH/L. Not only Dyson, in the past few years, the company, Sakti3, has also received investments from companies such as General Motors.

Liquid battery life bottleneck

Since the introduction of lithium-ion batteries containing liquid electrolytes into electronic devices in 1991, liquid lithium batteries have become one of the most mature and widely used technical routes, but in the eyes of James Dyson, "Now Battery technology has encountered certain bottlenecks"

For example, Apple Watch, which has not yet been listed, has been spat. Behind the price of 128,000 yuan, the battery life that the public believes should be upgraded has not made a significant breakthrough, only 18 hours. "The price of this renewal, can only say that the purchase is the feelings ..." Net friend aid, "with the price of a car to buy a watch, drunk, and every day to recharge Oh. "

Indeed, it is not just wearable devices, including smart homes, but the once-popular new energy car rookie Tesla that is being questioned by battery life bottlenecks. Although its appearance is cool enough, the concept of environmental protection is also fashionable enough, but even if the mileage reaches 500 KM without a car, once the battery power is exhausted, it is really difficult to move. However, Tesla founder and CEO Musk is also innocent. The lack of battery mileage is the first problem that the industry can not solve. Moreover, among all new energy vehicles, Tesla is already the champion in mileage.

Perhaps one of the most important problems that is hampering the development of the electronics industry today is not the technology of the product itself, but the improvement of battery life. So why can't liquid lithium batteries have longer range?

The length of battery range depends to a large extent on the energy storage capacity of the battery, that is, the energy density per unit volume. To increase the unit energy density of the battery, one is to increase the working voltage and the other is to increase the energy density of the electrode material. When the working voltage can only be in a fixed area, the energy density of the battery can only be increased by the energy density of the electrode material. In other words, the development of lithium batteries follows the law of "one generation of materials, one generation of batteries." The existing lithium battery positive electrode materials generally include lithium cobalt, lithium manganese, lithium iron phosphate, and ternary materials, while the negative electrode materials are generally graphite, hard/soft carbon, lithium titanate, and alloy negative electrode materials. The excavation space is not large.

That means significantly increasing the range of lithium-ion batteries unless new alternatives can be found in the electrode material.

Innovation in solid-state batteries

However, since the energy density of liquid lithium batteries has not been greatly improved for the time being, is there another more advantageous battery technology that can replace it?

According to Bloomberg News, Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn said at a press conference in Stuttgart that Volkswagen plans to make a decision in the first half of this year whether it will develop new batteries from US startup QuantumScape. Technology used in Volkswagen's electric cars

With the solid-state battery technology, VW would have a range of 700 kilometers, more than Tesla models and all existing new energy vehicles. Perhaps because of this, as early as December 2014, Volkswagen acquired about 5 % of the aforementioned QuantumScape company.

Actually, it's not just the public. As early as 2010, Toyota had introduced solid-state batteries with a range of more than 1,000 KM. Efforts including QuantumScape and Sakti3 are also trying to replace traditional liquid lithium batteries with solid batteries.

The electrolyte of a solid battery is a solid state, and its density and structure allow more charged ions to gather at one end to conduct more current, which in turn increases the battery capacity. So, with the same amount of electricity, the solid cell volume will become smaller. Not only that, due to the absence of electrolytes in solid-state batteries, storage will become easier. When used on large equipment such as automobiles, there is no need to add additional cooling tubes, electronic controls, etc., which not only saves costs, but also effectively reduces weight..

According to its official name, Sakti3 has produced batteries with an energy density of 1,100 watt-hours per liter, which is almost twice the energy density of current lithium-ion batteries. Kevin Jones, a battery expert and materials science professor at the University of Florida, believes that if the battery can store as much electricity as Sakti3, the cost of purchasing and using the electric car may be the same as that of a regular car.

And solid-state batteries have another advantage -- they don't explode or catch fire when damaged in an accident. Before that, it was because of frequent battery fires and other malfunctions that Fisk, as well as Tesla in new energy vehicles, went bankrupt and slowly disappeared.

The road to commercialization is long

Avestor Canada also tried to develop solid-state lithium batteries and eventually filed for bankruptcy in 2006. Avestor uses a polymer separator instead of the liquid electrolyte in the battery, but it has not solved the safety problem. There have been several battery combustion or explosion incidents in North America.

Sakti3's solid-state batteries are made using thin film deposition technology, which is also commonly used in flat panel displays and photovoltaic solar cell production. "The battery is split in half or the battery is placed in a high temperature environment. But the batteries can continue to work. "In her opinion, Sakti3's solid-state batteries are completely safe.

But Toyota does not see solid-state battery technology as the only way forward for new energy, not long after it unveiled its first mass-produced hydrogen fuel cell car.

"Solid state batteries may be one of the future trends in battery technology, but perhaps not the best. "The technicians of the above-mentioned new energy production companies told reporters that" including fuel cells, Super capacitors, aluminum air cells, and magnesium batteries have greater conceptual development space, and in the end, it depends on which route develops faster and more closely. "

Perhaps the biggest test is price. It is understood that the cost of liquid lithium batteries is about 200 to 300 U.S. dollars per kilowatt-hour. If you use existing technology to make solid batteries that are sufficient to power smart phones, the cost will reach 15,000 U.S. dollars, and the cost of solid batteries that are enough to power cars is even higher. The cost is a staggering 90 million U.S. dollars.

An important reason for the high cost of solid-state batteries, says Sastry, is their inefficiency. According to Sastry's plan, Sakti3 will eventually reduce the cost of batteries to $100 per kilowatt-hour, but she did not give the final time.

From the time of the theory, solid-state batteries are not a new concept, but over the years, research and development has not progressed as fast as expected. Like lithium-ion batteries, in the 1970s, the concepts and experimental certification were advancing in parallel, but the real mass use was already at the end of the 20th century.

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