Today’s Gamechanger – Professor Yi Cui (Stanford) – How Far Can Batteries Go? Building a Better Battery with Nanotechnology Architecture

How to build a better Battery through Nanotechnology

PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA (Note to Readers: This original article was published in 2016 May. Recent updates, News Releases and a YouTube Video have been provided) 

On a drizzly, gray morning in April, Yi Cui weaves his scarlet red Tesla in and out of Silicon Valley traffic. Cui, a materials scientist at Stanford University here, is headed to visit Amprius, a battery company he founded 8 years ago. Amprius Latest News Release (December 2018)

It’s no coincidence that he is driving a battery-powered car, and that he has leased rather than bought it. In a few years, he says, he plans to upgrade to a new model, with a crucial improvement: “Hopefully our batteries will be in it.”

Cui and Amprius are trying to take lithium–ion batteries—today’s best commercial technology—to the next level. They have plenty of company. Massive corporations such as Panasonic, Samsung, LG Chem, Apple, and Tesla are vying to make batteries smaller, lighter, and more powerful. But among these power players, Cui remains a pioneering force.

Unlike others who focus on tweaking the chemical composition of a battery’s electrodes or its charge-conducting electrolyte, Cui is marrying battery chemistry with nanotechnology. He is building intricately structured battery electrodes that can soak up and release charge-carrying ions in greater quantities, and faster, than standard electrodes can, without producing troublesome side reactions. “He’s taking the innovation of nanotechnology and using it to control chemistry,” says Wei Luo, a materials scientist and battery expert at the University of Maryland, College Park.

“I wanted to change the world, and also get rich, but mainly change the world.”

Yi Cui, Stanford University

In a series of lab demonstrations, Cui has shown how his architectural approach to electrodes can domesticate a host of battery chemistries that have long tantalized researchers but remained problematic. Among them: lithium-ion batteries with electrodes of silicon instead of the standard graphite, batteries with an electrode made of bare lithium metal, and batteries relying on lithium-sulfur chemistry, which are potentially more powerful than any lithium-ion battery. The nanoscale architectures he is exploring include silicon nanowires that expand and contract as they absorb and shed lithium ions, and tiny egg like structures with carbon shells protecting lithium-rich silicon yolks.

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Watch a YouTube Video on the latest Update from Professor Cui (November 2018). A very concise and informative Summary of the State of NextGen Batteries.

** Amprius already supplies phone batteries with silicon electrodes that store 10% more energy than the best conventional lithium-ion batteries on the market.

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Another prototype beats standard batteries by 40%, and even better ones are in the works. So far, the company does not make batteries for electric vehicles (EVs), but if the technologies Cui is exploring live up to their promise, the company could one day supply car batteries able to store up to 10 times more energy than today’s top performers. That could give modest-priced EVs the same range as gas-powered models—a revolutionary advance that could help nations power their vehicle fleets with electricity provided by solar and wind power, dramatically reducing carbon emissions.

Cui says that when he started in research, “I wanted to change the world, and also get rich, but mainly change the world.” His quest goes beyond batteries. His lab is exploring nanotech innovations that are spawning startup companies aiming to provide cheaper, more effective air and water purification systems. But so far Cui has made his clearest mark on batteries. Luo calls his approach “untraditional and surprising.” Jun Liu, a materials scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, put it more directly: Cui’s nanotech contributions to battery technology are “tremendous.”

Making leaps in battery technology is surprisingly hard to do. Even as Silicon Valley’s primary innovation, the computer chip, has made exponential performance gains for decades, batteries have lagged. Today’s best lithium-ion cells hold about 700 watt-hours per liter. That’s about five times the energy density of nickel-cadmium batteries from the mid-1980s—not bad, but not breathtaking. In the past decade, the energy density of the best commercial batteries has doubled.

Battery users want more. The market for lithium-ion batteries alone is expected to top $30 billion a year by 2020, according to a pair of recent reports by market research firms Transparency Market Research and Taiyou Research. The rise in production of EVs by car companies that include Tesla, General Motors, and Nissan accounts for some of that surge.

But today’s EVs leave much to be desired. For a Tesla Model S, depending on the exact model, the 70- to 90-kilowatt-hour batteries alone weigh 600 kilograms and account for about $30,000 of the car’s price, which can exceed $100,000. Yet they can take the car only about 400 kilometers on a single charge, substantially less than the range of many conventional cars. Nissan’s Leaf is far cheaper, with a sticker price of about $29,000. But with a smaller battery pack, its range is only about one-third that of the Tesla.

Improving batteries could make a major impact. Doubling a battery’s energy density would enable car companies to keep the driving range the same while halving the size and cost of the battery—or keep the battery size constant and double the car’s range. “The age of electric vehicles is coming,” Cui says. But in order for EVs to take over, “we have to do better.”

He recognized the need early in his career. After finishing his undergraduate degree in his native China in 1998, Cui moved first to Harvard University and then to the University of California (UC), Berkeley, to complete a Ph.D. and postdoc in labs that were pioneering the synthesis of nanosized materials. Those were the early days of nanotechnology, when researchers were struggling to get a firm handle on how to create just the materials they wanted, and the world of applications was only beginning to take shape.

While at UC Berkeley, Cui spent time with colleagues next door at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). At the time, LBNL’s director was Steven Chu, who pushed the lab to invent renewable energy technologies that had the potential to combat climate change, among them better batteries for storing clean energy. (Chu later went on to serve as President Barack Obama’s secretary of energy from 2009 to 2013.)

“At the beginning, I wasn’t thinking about energy. I had never worked on batteries,” Cui says. But Chu and others impressed on him that nanotechnology could give batteries an edge.

As Chu says now, it offers “a new knob to turn, and an important one,” enabling researchers to control not only the chemical composition of materials on the smallest scales, but also the arrangement of atoms within them—and thus how chemical reactions involving them proceed.

After moving to Stanford, Cui quickly gravitated to the nexus between nanotechnology and the electrochemistry that makes batteries work—and accounts for their limitations. Take lithium-ion rechargeable batteries. In principle, these batteries are simple: They consist of two electrodes divided by a membrane “separator” and a liquid electrolyte that allows ions to glide back and forth between the electrodes.

When a battery is charging, lithium ions are released from the positive electrode, or cathode, which consists of a lithium alloy, commonly lithium cobalt oxide or lithium iron phosphate. They are drawn toward the negatively charged electrode, called the anode, which is usually made of graphite. There they snuggle in between the graphite’s sheets of carbon atoms. Voltage from an external power source drives the whole ionic mass migration, storing power.

When a device—say, a power tool or a car—is turned on and demands energy, the battery discharges: Lithium atoms in the graphite give up electrons, which travel through the external circuit to the cathode. Meanwhile, the lithium ions slip out of the graphite and zip through the electrolyte and the separator to the cathode, where they meet up with electrons that have made the journey through the circuit (see diagram below).

     

GRAPHIC/INTERACTIVE: V. ALTOUNIAN/SCIENCE

Nano to the rescue

Cui and colleagues have applied several nanotechnology-inspired solutions to keep silicon anodes from breaking down and to prevent battery-killing side reactions.

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Graphite is today’s go-to anode material because it is highly conductive and thus readily passes collected electrons to the metal wires in a circuit. But graphite is only so-so at gathering lithium ions during charging. It takes six carbon atoms in graphite to hold on to a single lithium ion. That weak grip limits how much lithium the electrode can hold and thus how much power the battery can store.

Silicon has the potential to do far better. Each silicon atom can bind to four lithium ions. In principle, that means a silicon-based anode can store 10 times as much energy as one made from graphite. Electrochemists have struggled in vain for decades to tap that enormous capacity.

It’s easy enough to make anodes from chunks of silicon; the problem is that the anodes don’t last. As the battery is charged and lithium ions rush in to bind to silicon atoms, the anode material swells as much as 300%. Then, when the lithium ions rush out during the battery’s discharge cycle, the anode rapidly shrinks again. After only a few cycles of such torture, silicon electrodes fracture and eventually split into tiny, isolated grains. The anode—and the battery—crumbles and dies.

Cui thought he could solve the problem. His experience at Harvard and UC Berkeley had taught him that nanomaterials often behave differently from materials in bulk. For starters, they have a much higher percentage of their atoms at their surface relative to the number in their interior. And because surface atoms have fewer atomic neighbors locking them in place, they can move more easily in response to stresses and strains. Other types of atomic movement explain why thin sheets of aluminum foil or paper can bend without breaking more easily than chunks of aluminum metal or wood can.

In 2008, Cui thought that fashioning a silicon anode from nanosized silicon wires might alleviate the stress and strain that pulverize bulk silicon anodes. The strategy worked. In a paper in Nature Nanotechnology, Cui and colleagues showed that when lithium ions moved into and out of the silicon nanowires, the nanowires suffered little damage. Even after 10 repeated cycles of charging and discharging, the anode retained 75% of its theoretical energy storage capacity.

Unfortunately, silicon nanowires are much more difficult and expensive to fashion than bulk silicon. Cui and colleagues started devising ways to make cheaper silicon anodes. First, they found a way to craft lithium-ion battery anodes from spherical silicon nanoparticles. Though potentially cheaper, these faced a second problem: The shrinking and swelling of the nanoparticles as the lithium atoms moved in and out opened cracks in the glue that bound the nanoparticles together. The liquid electrolyte seeped between the particles, driving a chemical reaction that coated them in a non-conductive layer, known as a solid-electrolyte interphase (SEI), which eventually grew thick enough to disrupt the anode’s charge-collecting abilities. “It’s like scar tissue,” says Yuzhang Li, a graduate student in Cui’s lab.

A few years later, Cui and his colleagues hit on another nanotech solution. They created egg like nanoparticles, surrounding each of their tiny silicon nanoparticles—the yolk—with a highly conductive carbon shell through which lithium ions could readily pass. The shell gave silicon atoms in the yolk ample room to swell and shrink, while protecting them from the electrolyte—and the reactions that form an SEI layer. In a 2012 paper in Nano Letters, Cui’s team reported that after 1000 cycles of charging and discharging, their yolk-shell anode retained 74% of its capacity.

They did even better 2 years later. They assembled bunches of their yolk-shell nanoparticles into micrometer-scale collections resembling miniature pomegranates. Bunching the silicon spheres boosted the anode’s lithium storage capacity and reduced unwanted side reactions with the electrolyte. In a February 2014 issue of Nature Nanotechnology, the group reported that batteries based on the new material retained 97% of their original capacity after 1000 charge and discharge cycles.

With his battery company up and running, Cui plans to launch startups that apply nanotech to air and water purification. Credit: NOAH BERGER

Earlier this year, Cui and colleagues reported a solution that outdoes even their complex pomegranate assemblies. They simply hammered large silicon particles down to the micrometer scale and then wrapped them in thin carbon sheets made from graphene. The hammered particles wound up larger than the silicon spheres in the pomegranates—so big that they fractured after a few charging cycles. But the graphene wrapping prevented the electrolyte compounds from reaching the silicon. It was also flexible enough to maintain contact with the fractured particles and thus carry their charges to the metal wires. What’s more, the team reported in Nature Energy, the larger silicon particles packed more mass—and thus more power—into a given volume, and they were far cheaper and easier to make than the pomegranates. “He has really taken this work in the right direction,” Jun Liu says.

Powered by such ideas, Amprius has raised more than $100 million to commercialize lithium-ion batteries with silicon anodes. The company is already manufacturing cellphone batteries in China and has sold more than 1 million of them, says Song Han, the company’s chief technology officer. The batteries, based on simple silicon nanoparticles that are cheap to make, are only 10% better than today’s lithium-ion cells. But at Amprius’s headquarters, Han showed off nanowire-silicon prototypes that are 40% better. And those, he says, still represent only the beginning of how good silicon anodes will eventually become.

Now, Cui is looking beyond silicon. One focus is to make anodes out of pure lithium metal, which has long been viewed as the ultimate anode material, as it has the potential to store even more energy than silicon and is much lighter.

But there have been major problems here, too. For starters, an SEI layer normally forms around the lithium metal electrode. That’s actually good news in this case: Lithium ions can penetrate the layer, so the SEI acts as a protective film around the lithium anode. But as the battery cycles, the metal swells and shrinks just as silicon particles do, and the pulsing can break the SEI layer. Lithium ions can then pile up in the crack, causing a metal spike, known as a dendrite, to sprout from the electrode. “Those dendrites can pierce the battery separator and short-circuit the battery and cause it to catch fire,” says Yayuan Liu, another graduate student in Cui’s group.

Conventional approaches haven’t solved the problem. But nanotechnology might. In one approach to preventing dendrite formation, Cui’s team stabilizes the SEI layer by coating the anode with a layer of interconnected nanocarbon spheres. In another, they’ve created a new type of yolk-shell particle, made of gold nanoparticles inside much larger carbon shells. When the nanocapsules are fashioned into an anode, the gold attracts lithium ions; the shells give the lithium room to shrink and swell without cracking the SEI layer, so dendrites don’t form.

Improving anodes is only half the battle in making better batteries. Cui’s team has taken a similar nano inspired approach to improving cathode materials as well, in particular sulfur. Like silicon on the anode side, sulfur has long been seen as a tantalizing option for the cathode. Each sulfur atom can hold a pair of lithiums, making it possible in principle to boost energy storage several fold over conventional cathodes. Perhaps equally important, sulfur is dirt cheap. But it, too, has problems. Sulfur is a relatively modest electrical conductor, and it reacts with common electrolytes to form chemicals that can kill the batteries after a few cycles of charging and discharging. Sulfur cathodes also tend to hoard charges instead of giving them up during discharge.

Seeking a nanosolution, Cui’s team encased sulfur particles inside highly conductive titanium dioxide shells, boosting battery capacity fivefold over conventional designs and preventing sulfur byproducts from poisoning the cell. The researchers have also made sulfur-based versions of their pomegranates, and they have trapped sulfur inside long, thin nanofibers. These and other innovations have not only boosted battery capacity, but also raised a measure known as the coulombic efficiency—how well the battery releases its charges—from 86% to 99%. “Now, we have high capacity on both sides of the electrode,” Cui says.

Down the road, Cui says, he intends to put both of his key innovations together. By coupling silicon anodes with sulfur cathodes, he hopes to make cheap, high-capacity batteries that could change the way the world powers its devices. “We think if we can make it work, it will make a big impact,” Cui says.

It just might help him change the world, and get rich on the side.

Bio – Professor Yi Cui

Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, of Photon Science, Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy and Prof, by courtesy, of Chemistry PhD, Harvard University (2002)

Cui studies nanoscale phenomena and their applications broadly defined. Research Interests: Nanocrystal and nanowire synthesis and self-assembly, electron transfer and transport in nanomaterials and at the nano interface, nanoscale electronic and photonic devices, batteries, solar cells, microbial fuel cells, water filters and chemical and biological sensors.

Academic Appointments

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• Professor, Materials Science and Engineering
• Professor, Photon Science Directorate
• Senior Fellow, Precourt Institute for Energy
• Professor (By courtesy), Chemistry
• Member, Bio-X
• Affiliate, Precourt Institute for Energy
• Member, Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute

Honors & Awards

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• David Filo and Jerry Yang Faculty Scholar, Stanford University (2010-2014)
• Sloan Research Fellowship, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (2010)
• Investigator Award, KAUST (2008)
• Young Investigator Award, ONR (2008)
• Innovators Award, MDV (2008)

MIT Study: Adding power choices reduces cost and risk of carbon-free electricity

New MIT research shows that, unless steady, continuous carbon-free sources of electricity are included in the mix, costs of decarbonizing the electrical system could be prohibitive and end up derailing attempts to mitigate the most severe effects of global climate change. Image: Chelsea Turner

To curb greenhouse gas emissions, nations, states, and cities should aim for a mix of fuel-saving, flexible, and highly reliable sources.

In major legislation passed at the end of August, California committed to creating a 100 percent carbon-free electricity grid — once again leading other nations, states, and cities in setting aggressive policies for slashing greenhouse gas emissions. Now, a study by MIT researchers provides guidelines for cost-effective and reliable ways to build such a zero-carbon electricity system.

The best way to tackle emissions from electricity, the study finds, is to use the most inclusive mix of low-carbon electricity sources.

Costs have declined rapidly for wind power, solar power, and energy storage batteries in recent years, leading some researchers, politicians, and advocates to suggest that these sources alone can power a carbon-free grid. But the new study finds that across a wide range of scenarios and locations, pairing these sources with steady carbon-free resources that can be counted on to meet demand in all seasons and over long periods — such as nuclear, geothermal, bioenergy, and natural gas with carbon capture — is a less costly and lower-risk route to a carbon-free grid.

The new findings are described in a paper published today in the journal Joule, by MIT doctoral student Nestor Sepulveda, Jesse Jenkins PhD ’18, Fernando de Sisternes PhD ’14, and professor of nuclear science and engineering and Associate Provost Richard Lester.

The need for cost effectiveness

“In this paper, we’re looking for robust strategies to get us to a zero-carbon electricity supply, which is the linchpin in overall efforts to mitigate climate change risk across the economy,” Jenkins says. To achieve that, “we need not only to get to zero emissions in the electricity sector, but we also have to do so at a low enough cost that electricity is an attractive substitute for oil, natural gas, and coal in the transportation, heat, and industrial sectors, where decarbonization is typically even more challenging than in electricity. ”

Sepulveda also emphasizes the importance of cost-effective paths to carbon-free electricity, adding that in today’s world, “we have so many problems, and climate change is a very complex and important one, but not the only one. So every extra dollar we spend addressing climate change is also another dollar we can’t use to tackle other pressing societal problems, such as eliminating poverty or disease.” Thus, it’s important for research not only to identify technically achievable options to decarbonize electricity, but also to find ways to achieve carbon reductions at the most reasonable possible cost.

To evaluate the costs of different strategies for deep decarbonization of electricity generation, the team looked at nearly 1,000 different scenarios involving different assumptions about the availability and cost of low-carbon technologies, geographical variations in the availability of renewable resources, and different policies on their use.

Regarding the policies, the team compared two different approaches. The “restrictive” approach permitted only the use of solar and wind generation plus battery storage, augmented by measures to reduce and shift the timing of demand for electricity, as well as long-distance transmission lines to help smooth out local and regional variations. The  “inclusive” approach used all of those technologies but also permitted the option of using  continual carbon-free sources, such as nuclear power, bioenergy, and natural gas with a system for capturing and storing carbon emissions. Under every case the team studied, the broader mix of sources was found to be more affordable.

The cost savings of the more inclusive approach relative to the more restricted case were substantial. Including continual, or “firm,” low-carbon resources in a zero-carbon resource mix lowered costs anywhere from 10 percent to as much as 62 percent, across the many scenarios analyzed. That’s important to know, the authors stress, because in many cases existing and proposed regulations and economic incentives favor, or even mandate, a more restricted range of energy resources.

“The results of this research challenge what has become conventional wisdom on both sides of the climate change debate,” Lester says. “Contrary to fears that effective climate mitigation efforts will be cripplingly expensive, our work shows that even deep decarbonization of the electric power sector is achievable at relatively modest additional cost. But contrary to beliefs that carbon-free electricity can be generated easily and cheaply with wind, solar energy, and storage batteries alone, our analysis makes clear that the societal cost of achieving deep decarbonization that way will likely be far more expensive than is necessary.”

A new taxonomy for electricity sources

In looking at options for new power generation in different scenarios, the team found that the traditional way of describing different types of power sources in the electrical industry — “baseload,” “load following,” and “peaking” resources — is outdated and no longer useful, given the way new resources are being used.

Rather, they suggest, it’s more appropriate to think of power sources in three new categories: “fuel-saving” resources, which include solar, wind and run-of-the-river (that is, without dams) hydropower; “fast-burst” resources, providing rapid but short-duration responses to fluctuations in electricity demand and supply, including battery storage and technologies and pricing strategies to enhance the responsiveness of demand; and “firm” resources, such as nuclear, hydro with large reservoirs, biogas, and geothermal.

“Because we can’t know with certainty the future cost and availability of many of these resources,” Sepulveda notes, “the cases studied covered a wide range of possibilities, in order to make the overall conclusions of the study robust across that range of uncertainties.”

Range of scenarios

The group used a range of projections, made by agencies such as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, as to the expected costs of different power sources over the coming decades, including costs similar to today’s and anticipated cost reductions as new or improved systems are developed and brought online. For each technology, the researchers chose a projected mid-range cost, along with a low-end and high-end cost estimate, and then studied many combinations of these possible future costs.

Under every scenario, cases that were restricted to using fuel-saving and fast-burst technologies had a higher overall cost of electricity than cases using firm low-carbon sources as well, “even with the most optimistic set of assumptions about future cost reductions,” Sepulveda says.

That’s true, Jenkins adds, “even when we assume, for example, that nuclear remains as expensive as it is today, and wind and solar and batteries get much cheaper.”

The authors also found that across all of the wind-solar-batteries-only cases, the cost of electricity rises rapidly as systems move toward zero emissions, but when firm power sources are also available, electricity costs increase much more gradually as emissions decline to zero.

“If we decide to pursue decarbonization primarily with wind, solar, and batteries,” Jenkins says, “we are effectively ‘going all in’ and betting the planet on achieving very low costs for all of these resources,” as well as the ability to build out continental-scale  high-voltage transmission lines and to induce much more flexible electricity demand.

In contrast, “an electricity system that uses firm low-carbon resources together with solar, wind, and storage can achieve zero emissions with only modest increases in cost even under pessimistic assumptions about how cheap these carbon-free resources become or our ability to unlock flexible demand or expand the grid,” says Jenkins. This shows how the addition of firm low-carbon resources “is an effective hedging strategy that reduces both the cost and risk” for fully decarbonizing power systems, he says.

Even though a fully carbon-free electricity supply is years away in most regions, it is important to do this analysis today, Sepulveda says, because decisions made now about power plant construction, research investments, or climate policies have impacts that can last for decades.

“If we don’t start now” in developing and deploying the widest range of carbon-free alternatives, he says, “that could substantially reduce the likelihood of getting to zero emissions.”

David Victor, a professor of international relations at the University of California at San Diego, who was not involved in this study, says, “After decades of ignoring the problem of climate change, finally policymakers are grappling with how they might make deep cuts in emissions. This new paper in Joule shows that deep decarbonization must include a big role for reliable, firm sources of electric power. The study, one of the few rigorous numerical analyses of how the grid might actually operate with low-emission technologies, offers some sobering news for policymakers who think they can decarbonize the economy with wind and solar alone.”

The research received support from the MIT Energy Initiative, the Martin Family Trust, and the Chilean Navy.

Why Do Most Science Startups Fail? Here’s Why …

“We need to get a lot better at bridging that gap between discovery and commercialization”

G. Satell – Inc. Magazine

It seems like every day we see or hear about a breakthrough new discovery that will change everything. Some, like perovskites in solar cells and CRISPR are improvements on existing technologies. Others, like quantum computing and graphene promise to open up new horizons encompassing many applications. Still others promise breakthroughs in Exciting Battery Technology Breakthrough News — Is Any Of It Real? or Beyond lithium — the search for a better battery

Nevertheless, we are still waiting for a true market impact. Quantum computing and graphene have been around for decades and still haven’t hit on their “killer app.” Perovskite solar cells and CRISPR are newer, but haven’t really impacted their industries yet. And those are just the most prominent examples.

The problem isn’t necessarily with the discoveries themselves, many of which are truly path-breaking, but that there’s a fundamental difference between discovering an important new phenomenon in the lab and creating value in the marketplace.

“We need to get a lot better at bridging that gap. To do so, we need to create a new innovation ecosystem for commercializing science.”

The Valley Of Death And The Human Problem

The gap between discovery and commercialization is so notorious and fraught with danger that it’s been unaffectionately called the “Valley of Death.” Part of the problem is that you can’t really commercialize a discovery, you can only commercialize a product and those are two very different things.

The truth is that innovation is never a single event, but a process of discovery, engineering and transformation. After something like graphene is discovered in the lab, it needs to be engineered into a useful product and then it has to gain adoption by winning customers in the marketplace. Those three things almost never happen in the same place.

So to bring an important discovery to market, you first need to identify a real world problem it can solve and connect to engineers who can transform it into a viable product or service. Then you need to find customers who are willing to drop whatever else they’ve been doing and adopt it on a large scale. That takes time, usually about 30 years.

The reason it takes so long is that there is a long list of problems to solve. To create a successful business based on a scientific discovery, you need to get scientists to collaborate effectively with engineers and a host of specialists in other areas, such as manufacturing, distribution and marketing. Those aren’t just technology problems, those are human problems. Being able to collaborate effectively is often the most important competitive advantage.

Wrong Industry, Wrong Application

One of the most effective programs for helping to bring discoveries out of the lab is I-Corps. First established by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to help recipients of SBIR grants identify business models for scientific discoveries, it has been such an extraordinary success that the US Congress has mandated its expansion across the federal government.

Based on Steve Blank’s lean startup methodology, the program aims to transform scientists into entrepreneurs. It begins with a presentation session, in which each team explains the nature of their discovery and its commercial potential. It’s exciting stuff, pathbreaking science with real potential to truly change the world.

The thing is, they invariably get it wrong. Despite their years of work to discover something of significance and their further efforts to apply and receive commercialization grants from the federal government, they fail to come up with a viable application in an industry that wants what they have to offer. 

Ironically, much of the success of the I-Corps program is due to these early sessions. Once they realize that they are on the wrong track, they embark on a crash course of customer discovery, interviewing dozens — and sometimes hundreds — of customers in search of a business model that actually has a chance of succeeding.

What’s startling about the program is that, without it, scientists with important discoveries often wasted years trying to make a business work that never really had a chance in the first place.

The Silicon Valley Myth

Much of the success of Silicon Valley has been based on venture-funded entrepreneurship. Startups with an idea to change the world create an early stage version of the product they want to launch, show it to investors and get funding to bring it to market. Just about every significant tech company was started this way.

Yet most of the success of Silicon Valley has been based on companies that sell either software or consumer gadgets, which are relatively cheap and easy to rapidly prototype. Many scientific startups, however, do not fit into this category. Often, they need millions of dollars to build a prototype and then have to sell to industrial companies with long lead times.

The myth of Silicon Valley is that venture-funded entrepreneurship is a generalizable model that can be applied to every type of business. It is not. In fact, it is a specific model that was conceived in a specific place at a specific time to fund mature technologies for specific markets. It’s not a solution that fits every problem.

The truth is that venture funds are very adept with assessing market risk, but not so good at taking on technology risk, especially in hard sciences. That simply isn’t what they were set up to do.

We Need A New Innovation Ecosystem For Science Entrepreneurship

In 1945, Vannevar Bush delivered a report, Science, The Endless Frontier, to President Truman, in which he made the persuasive argument that expanding the nation’s scientific capacity will expand its economic capacity and well being. His call led, ultimately, to building America’s scientific infrastructure, including programs like the NSF and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

It was Bush’s vision that made America a technological superpower. Grants from federal agencies to scientists enabled them to discover new knowledge. Then established businesses and, later, venture backed entrepreneurs would then take those discoveries to bring new products and services to market.

Look at any industry today and its most important technologies were largely shaped by investment from the federal government. Today, however, the challenges are evolving. We’re entering a new era of innovation in which technologies like genomics, nanotechnology and robotics are going to reshape traditional industries like energy, healthcare and manufacturing.

That’s exciting, but also poses new challenges, because these technologies are ill-suited to the Silicon Valley model of venture-funded entrepreneurship and need help to them get past the Valley of Death. So we need to build a new innovation ecosystem on top of the scientific architecture Bush created for the post-war world.

There have been encouraging signs. New programs like I-Corps, the Manufacturing Institutes, Cyclotron Road and Chain Reaction are beginning to help fill the gap.

Still much more needs to be done, especially at the state and local level to help build regional hubs for specific industries, if we are going to be nearly as successful in the 21st century as were were in the 20th.

Is This the Battery Boost We’ve Been Waiting For?

Electric cars are among the products that stand to benefit from new lithium-ion cells that could store as much as 40% more energy. A BMW i Vision Dynamics concept electric automobile, made by BMW AG, on display in September. PHOTO: SIMON DAWSON/BLOOMBERG

The batteries that power our modern world—from phones to dronesto electric cars—will soon experience something not heard of in years: Their capacity to store electricity will jump by double-digit percentages, according to researchers, developers and manufacturers.

The next wave of batteries, long in the pipeline, is ready for commercialization. This will mean, among other things, phones with 10% to 30% more battery life, or phones with the same battery life but faster and lighter or with brighter screens. We’ll see more cellular-connected wearables. As this technology becomes widespread, makers of electric vehicles and home storage batteries will be able to knock thousands of dollars off their prices over the next five to 10 years. Makers of electric aircraft will be able to explore new designs.

There is a limit to how far lithium-ion batteries can take us; surprisingly, it’s about twice their current capacity. The small, single-digit percentage improvements we see year after year typically are because of improvements in how they are made, such as small tweaks to their chemistry or new techniques for filling battery cells with lithium-rich electrolyte. What’s coming is a more fundamental change to the materials that make up a battery.

Equipment that Sila Nanotechnologies uses to manufacture material for lithium-silicon batteries. PHOTO: SILA NANOTECHNOLOGIES

 

First, some science: Every lithium-ion battery has an anode and a cathode. Lithium ions traveling between them yield the electrical current that powers our devices. When a battery is fully charged, the anode has sucked up lithium ions like a sponge. And as it discharges, those ions travel through the electrolyte, to the cathode.

Typically, anodes in lithium-ion batteries are made of graphite, which is carbon in a crystalline form. While graphite anodes hold a substantial number of lithium ions, researchers have long known a different material, silicon, can hold 25 times as many.

The trick is, silicon brings with it countless technical challenges. For instance, a pure silicon anode will soak up so many lithium ions that it gets “pulverized” after a single charge, says George Crabtree, director of the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research, established by the U.S. Department of Energy at the University of Chicago Argonne lab to accelerate battery research.

Current battery anodes can have small amounts of silicon, boosting their performance slightly. The amount of silicon in a company’s battery is a closely held trade secret, but Dr. Crabtree estimates that in any battery, silicon is at most 10% of the anode. In 2015, Tesla founder Elon Musk revealed that silicon in the Panasonic-made batteries of the auto maker’s Model S helped boost the car’s range by 6%.

Now, some startups say they are developing production-ready batteries with anodes that are mostly silicon. Sila Nanotechnologies,Angstron Materials , Enovix and Enevate, to name a few, offer materials for so-called lithium-silicon batteries, which are being tested by the world’s largest battery manufacturers, car companies and consumer-electronics companies.

Prototype batteries built at Sila with the startup’s silicon-dominant anode technology. PHOTO: SILA NANOTECHNOLOGIES

For Sila, in Alameda, Calif., the secret is nanoparticles lots of empty space inside. This way, the lithium can be absorbed into the particle without making the anode swell and shatter, says Sila Chief Executive Gene Berdichevsky. Cells made with Sila’s particles could store 20% to 40% more energy, he adds.

Angstron Materials, in Dayton, Ohio, makes similar claims about its nanoparticles for lithium-ion batteries.

Dr. Crabtree says this approach is entirely plausible, though there’s a trade-off: By allowing more room inside the anode for lithium ions, manufacturers must produce a larger anode. This anode takes up more space in the battery, allowing less overall space to increase capacity. This is why the upper bound of increased energy density using this approach is about 40%.

The big challenge, as ever, is getting to market, says Dr. Crabtree.

Sila’s clients include BMW and Amperex Technology , one of the world’s largest makers of batteries for consumer electronics, including both Apple ’s iPhone and Samsung ’s Galaxy S8 phone.

China-based Amperex is also an investor in Sila, but Amperex Chief Operating Officer Joe Kit Chu Lam says his company is securing several suppliers of the nanoparticles necessary to produce lithium-silicon batteries. Having multiple suppliers is essential for securing enough volume, he says.

This nanoparticle of carbon and silicon, made by Global Graphene Group, could help lithium-ion batteries store significantly more energy. PHOTO: GLOBAL GRAPHENE GROUP

The first commercial consumer devices to have higher-capacity lithium-silicon batteries will likely be announced in the next two years, says Mr. Lam, who expects a wearable to be first. Other companies claim a similar timetable for consumer rollout.

Enevate produces complete silicon-dominant anodes for car manufacturers. CEO Robert Rango says its technology increases the range of electric vehicles by 30% compared with conventional lithium-ion batteries.

BMW plans to incorporate Sila’s silicon anode technology in a plug-in electric vehicle by 2023, says a company spokesman. BMW expects an increase of 10% to 15% in battery-pack capacity in a single leap. While this is the same technology destined for mobile electronics, the higher volumes and higher safety demands of the auto industry mean slower implementation there. In 2017, BMW said it would invest €200 million ($246 million) in its own battery-research center.

Enovix, whose investors include Intel and Qualcomm, has pioneered a different kind of 3-D structure for its batteries, says CEO Harrold Rust. With much higher energy density and anodes that are almost pure silicon, the company claims its batteries would contain 30% to 50% more energy in the size needed for a mobile phone, and two to three times as much in the size required for a smartwatch.

The downside: producing these will require a significant departure from the current manufacturing process.

Even though it’s a significant advance, to get beyond what’s possible with lithium-silicon batteries will require a change in battery composition—such as lithium-sulfur chemistry or solid-state batteries. Efforts to make these technologies viable are at a much earlier stage, however, and it isn’t clear when they’ll arrive.

Meanwhile, we can look forward to the possibility of a thinner or more capable Apple Watch, wireless headphones we don’t have to charge as often and electric vehicles that are actually affordable. The capacity of lithium-ion batteries has increased threefold since their introduction in 1991, and at every level of improvement, new and unexpected applications, devices and business opportunities pop up.

 

Corrections & Amplifications 

Sila Nanotechnologies produces nanoparticles that contain silicon and other components, but don’t include graphite. A previous version of this column incorrectly described nanoparticles as a graphite-silicon composite. An earlier version also incorrectly identified Angstron Materials as Angstrom Materials. (Angstron error corrected: March 18, 2018. Nanoparticles error corrected: March 19, 2018

 

Appeared in the March 19, 2018, print edition as ‘Battery Life Powers Ahead Toward Sizable Gains.’

Have you seen Tenka Energy’s YouTube Video?  Watch Here:

From Electric Vehicles – Micro Mobility and the NextGen ‘Green Revolution’ – Panasonic far from being ONLY a battery supplier: CES 2018 with (5) Videos

Panasonic is far from being satisfied with only a battery supplier role. The Japanese company has greater ambitions and intends to offer its scalable “ePowertrain” platform for small EVs.

The main target for the ePowertrain are EV bikes and micro EVs. These should now be easier to develop and produce using Panasonic’s power unit (with an on-board charger, junction box, inverter and DC-to-DC converter) and a motor unit. Of course, batteries are available too.

“Panasonic Corporation announced today that it has developed a scalable “ePowertrain” platform, a solution for the effective development of small electric vehicles (EVs). The platform is a systematized application of devices used in the EVs of major global carmakers, and is intended to contribute to the advancement of the coming mobility society.

Global demand for EVs is expected to expand rapidly, along with a wide variety of new mobility. These include not only conventional passenger vehicles but also new types of EVs, such as EV bikes and micro EVs, which suit various lifestyles and uses in each region.

The platform Panasonic has developed for EV bikes and micro EVs is an energy-efficient, safe powertrain that features integrated compactness, high efficiency, and flexible scalability. It consists of basic units, including a power unit (with an on-board charger, junction box, inverter and DC-to-DC converter) and a motor unit. The platform will help reduce costs and lead time for vehicle development by scaling up or down the combination of basic units in accordance with vehicle specifications such as size, speed and torque.

Panasonic has developed and delivered a wide range of components – including batteries, on-board chargers, film capacitors, DC-to-DC converters and relays – specifically for EVs, plug-in hybrids, and hybrid EVs. Panasonic will continue to contribute to the global growth in EVs through system development that makes use of the strengths of our devices.”

In the case of full-size cars, Panasonic is most known for its battery cells supplied to Tesla. The partnership was recently expanded to include solar cells.

Panasonic feels pretty independent from Tesla, stressing that it has its own battery factory “inside” the Tesla Gigafactory, however the cells were “jointly designed and engineered”.

Annual production of 35 GWh is expected in 2019.

Production of New Battery Cells for Tesla’s “Model 3”

Panasonic’s lithium-ion battery factory within Tesla’s Gigafactory handles production of 2170-size*1 cylindrical battery cells for Tesla’s energy storage system and its new “Model 3” sedan, which began production in July 2017. The high performance cylindrical “2170 cell” was jointly designed and engineered by Tesla and Panasonic to offer the best performance at the lowest production cost in an optimal form factor for both electric vehicles (EVs) and energy products. Panasonic and Tesla are conducting phased investment in the Gigafactory, which will have 35 GWh*/year production capacity of lithium-ion battery cells, more than was produced worldwide in 2013. Panasonic is estimating that global production volume for electric vehicles in fiscal 2026 will see an approximately six-fold increase from fiscal 2017 to over 3 million units. The Company will contribute to the realization of a sustainable energy society through the provision of electric vehicle batteries.

 

 

 

 

 

In regards to solar cells, Panasonic expects 1 GW output at the Tesla Gigafactory 2 in Buffalo, New York in 2019.

The solar cells are used both in conventional modules, as well as in Tesla Solar Roof tiles.

Strengthening Collaboration with Tesla

In addition to the collaboration with Tesla in the lithium-ion battery business (for details, refer to pages 5-6), Panasonic also collaborates with the company in the solar cell business and will begin production of solar cells this summer at its Buffalo, New York, factory. Solar cells produced at this factory are supplied to Tesla. In addition, the solar cells are used in roof tiles sold by Tesla, a product that integrates solar cells with roofing materials.Panasonic will continue its investment in the factory going forward and plans to raise solar cell production capacity to 1 GW by 2019.

Volvo goes ALL EV/ Hybrid by 2019 ~ Is it a BIG Deal? + Video NextGen ‘Battery Pack’ that could propel Tesla ‘S’ 2X farther at 1/2 the Cost

Original Report from IDTechEX

Volvo Cars has been in the news recently in relation to their announcement this Wednesday on their decision to leave the internal combustion engine only based automotive industry.   The Chinese-European company announced that from 2019 all their vehicles will be either pure electric or hybrid electric. In this way it has been argued the company is making a bold move towards electrification of vehicles. Volvo to capture potential market in China The company will launch a pure electric car in 2019 and that is a great move indeed, considering that the company has been owned by Chinese vehicle manufacturer Geely since 2010.

The Chinese electric vehicle market has been booming in the last years reaching a sales level of 350,000 plug-in EVs (pure electric and plug-in hybrid electric cars) in 2016. The Chinese plug-in EV market grew 300% from 2014 to 2015 but cooled down to 69% growth in 2016 vs 2015, still pushing a triple digit growth in pure electric cars. The Chinese government has announced that in 2017 sales will reach 800,000 NEV  (new energy vehicles including passenger and bus, both pure electric and hybrid electric).   IDTechEx believes that China will not make it to that level, but will definitely push the figures close to that mark.

We think that the global plug-in electric vehicle market will surpass 1 million sales per year for the first time at the end of 2017.   Until recently this market has been mostly dominated by Chinese manufacturers, being BYD the best seller of electric cars in the country with 100,000 plug-in EVs sold in 2016. Tesla polemically could not penetrate the market but in 2016 sold around 11,000 units.  

Whilst the owner of Volvo Cars, Geely, is active in China selling around 17,000 pure electric cars per year, it might be that Volvo has now realized that they can leverage on their brand in the Chinese premium market to catch the huge growth opportunity in China and need to participate as soon as possible.   More information on market forecasts can be found in IDTechEx Research’s report Electric Vehicles 2017-2037: Forecasts, Analysis and Opportunities.

Is Volvo Cars’ move a revolutionary one? Not really, as technically speaking the company is not entirely making a bold movement to only 100% “strong” hybrid electric and pure electric vehicles.   This is because the company will launch in 2019 a “mild” hybrid electric vehicles, this is also known in the industry as 48V hybrid electric platform. This is a stepping stone between traditional internal combustion engine companies and “strong” hybrid electric vehicles such as the Toyota Prius.

The 48V platform is being adopted by many automotive manufacturers, not only Volvo. OEMs like Continental developed this platform to provide a “bridge technology”  towards full EVs for automotive manufacturers, providing 6 to 20 kW electric assistance. By comparison, a full hybrid system typically offers 20-40-kW and a plug-in hybrid, 50-90 kW.   Volvo had already launched the first diesel plug-in hybrid in 2012 and the company will launch a new plug-in hybrid platform in 2018 in addition to the launch of the 2019 pure electric vehicle platform.   Going only pure electric and plug-in hybrid electric would be really revolutionary.   See IDTechEx Research’s report Mild Hybrid 48V Vehicles 2017-2027 for more information on 48V platforms.

Additional Information: The Tesla Model ‘S’

The Tesla Model S is a full-sized all-electric five-door, luxury liftback, produced by Tesla, Inc., and introduced on 22 June 2012.^[14] It scored a perfect 5.0 NHTSA automobile safety rating.^[15] The EPA official rangefor the 2017 Model S 100D,^[16] which is equipped with a 100 kWh(360 MJ) battery pack, is 335 miles (539 km), higher than any other electric car.^[17] The EPA rated the 2017 90D Model S’s energy consumption at 200.9 watt-hours per kilometer (32.33 kWh/100 mi or 20.09 kWh/100 km) for a combined fuel economy of 104 miles per gallon gasoline equivalent (2.26 L/100 km or 125 mpg_‑imp).^[18] In 2016, Tesla updated the design of the Model S to closely match that of the Model X. As of July 2017, the following versions are available: 75, 75D, 90D, 100D and P100D.^[19]

 

 

For more specific details on the updated Tesla Battery Pack go here:

Teardown of new 100 kWh Tesla battery pack reveals new cooling system and 102 kWh capacity

 

 

 

A radical move would be to drop diesel engines On-road diesel vehicles produce approximately 20% of global anthropogenic emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), which are key PM and ozone precursors.   Diesel emission pollutions has been confirmed as a major source of premature mortality. A recent study published in Nature  by the Environmental Health Analytics LLC and the International Council on Clean Transportation both based in Washington, USA found that whilst regulated NOx emission limits in leading markets have been progressively tightened, current diesel vehicles emit far more NOx under real-world operating conditions than during laboratory certification testing. The authors show that across 11 markets, representing approximately 80% of global diesel vehicle sales, nearly one-third of on-road heavy-duty diesel vehicle emissions and over half of on-road light-duty diesel vehicle emissions are in excess of certification limits.   These emissions were associated with about 38,000 premature deaths globally in 2015.

The authors conclude that more stringent standards are required in order to avoid 174,000 premature deaths globally in 2040.   Diesel cars account for over 50 percent of all new registrations in Europe, making the region by far the world’s biggest diesel market. Volvo Cars, sells 90 percent of its XC 90 off roaders in Europe with diesel engines.   “From today’s perspective, we will not develop any more new generation diesel engines,” said Volvo’s CEO Hakan Samuelsson told German’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in an interview .   Samuelsson declared  that Volvo Cars aims to sell 1 million “electrified” cars by 2025, nevertheless he refused to be drawn on when Volvo Cars will sell its last diesel powered vehicle.

Goldman Sachs believes  a regulatory crackdown could add 300 euros ($325) per engine to diesel costs that are already some 1,300 euros above their petrol-powered equivalents, as carmakers race to bring real NOx emissions closer to their much lower test-bench scores. Scandinavia’s vision of a CO2-free economy Volvo’s decision should also be placed in a wider context regarding the transition to an environmentally sustainable economy.

Scandinavia’s paper industry has made great strides towards marketing itself as green and eco-aware in the last decades, so much so that countries like Norway have tripled the amount of standing wood in forests compared to 100 years ago. Energy supply is also an overarching theme, with each one of the four Scandinavian countries producing more than 39% of their electricity with renewables (Finland 39%, Sweden and Denmark 56%, Norway 98%). Finally, strong public incentives have made it possible for electric vehicles to become a mainstream market in Norway, where in 2016, one in four cars sold was a plug-in electric, either pure or hybrid.   It is then of no surprise that the first battery Gigafactory announcement in Europe came from a Swedish company called Northvolt (previously SGF Energy).

The Li-ion factory will open in 4 steps, with each one adding 8 GWh of production capacity. This gives a projected final output of 32 GWh, but if higher energy cathodes are developed, 40-50 GWh capacity can be envisioned. A site has not yet been identified, but the choice has been narrowed down to 6-7 locations, all of them in the Scandinavian region. The main reasons to establish a Gigafactory there boil down to the low electricity prices (hydroelectric energy), presence of relevant mining sites, and the presence of local know-how from the pulp & paper industry.   After a long search for a European champion in the EV market, it finally seems that Sweden has accepted to take the lead, and compete with giants like BYD and rising stars like Tesla. This could be the wake-up call for many other European car makers, which have been rather bearish towards EV acceptance despite many bold announcements.   To learn more about IDTechEx’s view on electric vehicles, and our projections up to 2037, please check our master report on the subject http://www.IDTechEx.com/ev .

Top image source: Volvo Cars Learn more at the next leading event on the topic: Business and Technology Insight Forum. Korea 2017 on 19 – 21 Sep 2017 in Seoul, Korea hosted by IDTechEx.

More Information on ‘NextGen Magnum SuperCap-Battery Pack’ that could propel a Tesla Model ‘S’ 90% farther (almost double) and cost 1/2 (one-half) as much: Video

 

Renewable Energy Needed to Drive Uptake of Electric Vehicles ~ Queensland University

Plugging into renewable energy sources outweighs the cost and short driving ranges for consumers intending to buy electric vehicles, according to a new study.

Queensland University of Technology Postdoctoral Research Fellow Dr Kenan Degirmenci, from QUT Business School, said environmental performance – or being green – was more important than price or range confidence for electric vehicle consumers.

“High purchase costs and short driving ranges have been considered to be the main factors which impede people’s decision to buy electric vehicles,” he said.

“Since electricity needs to be produced from renewable energy sources for electric vehicles to be a true green alternative, the environmental performance has also been presumed to be a factor.”

In a newly published study titled Consumer purchase intentions for electric vehicles: Is green more important than price and range? Dr Degirmenci found environmental performance was in fact an even stronger predictor of purchase intention over price and range confidence.

The study involved interviews with 40 consumers and a survey with 167 people who participated in test drives with plug-in battery electric vehicles in Germany.

“We found the majority of participants placed great emphasis on the need for electricity for electric vehicles to be produced from renewable energy sources in order for them to be a true alternative,” he said.

Dr Degirmenci said when considering greenhouse gas emissions it was important to acknowledge the difference between on-road emissions only taking into account the fuel used, and well-to-wheel emissions including all emissions related to fuel production, processing, distribution and use.

“For example, a petrol-driven vehicle produces 119g CO2-e/km, of which most are on-road emissions. In comparison, an electric vehicle produces zero on-road emissions,” he said.

“However, if electricity is generated from coal to charge an electric vehicle it produces 139g CO2-e/km well-to-wheel emissions, compared with only 9g CO2-e/km well-to-wheel emissions with electricity from renewable energy sources.”

Dr Degirmenci said the results of the study were relevant to Australia because the transport sector accounted for 16 per cent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions and 85 per cent of these were generated by road transport.

“In this regard, a transition from conventional combustion vehicles to electric vehicles has the potential to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions substantially, if that electricity is produced from renewable energy sources,” Dr Degirmenci said.

“Back to the Future” ~ Nanotechnology offers new approach to increasing storage ability of Capacitors: Applications for Portable Electronics & EV’s

For Back to the Future fans, this week marked a milestone that took three decades to reach.

Oct. 21, 2015, was the day that Doc Brown and Marty McFly landed in the future in their DeLorean, with time travel made possible by a “flux capacitor.”

While the flux capacitor still conjures sci-fi images, capacitors are now key components of portable electronics, computing systems, and electric vehicles.

In contrast to batteries, which offer high storage capacity but slow delivery of energy, capacitors provide fast delivery but poor storage capacity.

A great deal of effort has been devoted to improving this feature — known as energy density — of dielectric capacitors, which comprise an insulating material sandwiched between two conducting metal plates.

Now, a group of researchers at the University of Delaware and the Chinese Academy of Sciences has successfully used nanotechnology to achieve this goal.

Dielectric Capacitor: A diagram of the dielectric capacitor research developed by a University of Delaware-led research team.

The work is reported in a paper, “Dielectric Capacitors with Three-Dimensional Nanoscale Interdigital Electrodes for Energy Storage”, published in Science Advances, the first open-access, online-only journal of AAAS.

“With our approach, we achieved an energy density of about two watts per kilogram, which is significantly higher than that of other dielectric capacitor structures reported in the literature,” says Bingqing Wei, professor of mechanical engineering at UD. (Article continues below)

Also Read About

Rice Nanoporous Nickel Super Capacitors

Researchers at Rice University in Houston, Texas, have developed a nanoporous material that has the energy density (the amount of energy stored per unit mass) of an electrochemical battery and the power density (the maximum amount of power that can be supplied per unit mass) of a supercapacitor. It’s important to note that the energy storage device enabled by the material is not claimed to be either of these types of energy storage devices.

Watch a New Video about a New Energy Storage Company commercializing the Rice University Technology: 

 

 

 

(Article Continued from above)

“To our knowledge, this is the first time that 3D nanoscale interdigital electrodes have been realized in practice,” he adds. “With their high surface area relative to their size, carbon nanotubes embedded in uniquely designed and structured 3D architectures have enabled us to address the low ability of dielectric capacitors to store energy.”

One of the keys to the success of the new capacitor is an interdigitated design — similar to interwoven fingers between two hands with “gloves” — that dramatically decreases the distance between opposing electrodes and therefore increases the ability of the capacitor to store an electrical charge.

Another significant feature of the capacitors is that the unique new three-dimensional nanoscale electrode also offers high voltage breakdown, which means that the integrated dielectric material (alumina, Al2O3) does not easily fail in its intended function as an insulator.

“In contrast to previous versions, we expect our newly structured dielectric capacitors to be more suitable for field applications that require high energy density storage, such as accessory power supply and hybrid power systems,” Wei says.

Source: By Diane Kukich, University of Delaware

Genesis Nanotechnology, Inc.

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McMaster University Develops Lightweight, High Density (Power) and Faster Recharging Nano- Cellulose Material: Applications in Wearable Devices, Portable Power Sources and Hybrid Vehicles

McMaster University: Summary: New work demonstrates an improved three-dimensional energy storage device constructed by trapping functional nanoparticles within the walls of a foam-like structure made of nanocellulose. The foam is made in one step and can be used to produce more sustainable capacitor devices with higher power density and faster charging abilities compared to rechargeable batteries. This development paves the way towards the production of lightweight, flexible, and high-power electronics for application in wearable devices, portable power sources and hybrid vehicles.

McMaster Engineering researchers Emily Cranston and Igor Zhitomirsky are turning trees into energy storage devices capable of powering everything from a smart watch to a hybrid car.

The scientists are using cellulose, an organic compound found in plants, bacteria, algae and trees, to build more efficient and longer-lasting energy storage devices or supercapacitors. This development paves the way toward the production of lightweight, flexible, and high-power electronics, such as wearable devices, portable power supplies and hybrid and electric vehicles.

“Ultimately the goal of this research is to find ways to power current and future technology with efficiency and in a sustainable way,” says Cranston, whose joint research was recently published in Advanced Materials. “This means anticipating future technology needs and relying on materials that are more environmentally friendly and not based on depleting resources.

Cellulose offers the advantages of high strength and flexibility for many advanced applications; of particular interest are nanocellulose-based materials. The work by Cranston, an assistant chemical engineering professor, and Zhitomirsky, a materials science and engineering professor, demonstrates an improved three-dimensional energy storage device constructed by trapping functional nanoparticles within the walls of a nanocellulose foam.

The foam is made in a simplified and fast one-step process. The type of nanocellulose used is called cellulose nanocrystals and looks like uncooked long-grain rice but with nanometer-dimensions. In these new devices, the ‘rice grains’ have been glued together at random points forming a mesh-like structure with lots of open space, hence the extremely lightweight nature of the material. This can be used to produce more sustainable capacitor devices with higher power density and faster charging abilities compared to rechargeable batteries.

Lightweight and high-power density capacitors are of particular interest for the development of hybrid and electric vehicles. The fast-charging devices allow for significant energy saving, because they can accumulate energy during braking and release it during acceleration.

“I believe that the best results can be obtained when researchers combine their expertise,” Zhitomirsky says. “Emily is an amazing research partner. I have been deeply impressed by her enthusiasm, remarkable ability to organize team work and generate new ideas.”

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Story Source:

The above post is reprinted from materials provided by McMaster University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Xuan Yang, Kaiyuan Shi, Igor Zhitomirsky, Emily D. Cranston. Cellulose Nanocrystal Aerogels as Universal 3D Lightweight Substrates for Supercapacitor Materials. Advanced Materials, 2015; DOI: 10.1002/adma.201502284