Browse Topic: Solid state batteries
A team led by Kelsey Hatzell, Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, has uncovered insights that could help power a new type of battery, called an anode-free solid-state battery, past lithium-ion’s limitations.
From laptops to electric vehicles, Li-ion batteries power everyday life. However, as demand for longer-lasting devices threatens to outstrip the energy that Li-ion supplies, researchers are on the hunt for more powerful batteries.
It's not hard to find automakers and battery companies that are trying to develop viable solid-state batteries. The technology will open up quicker charging, increased energy density and, more importantly, lower costs. At Nissan's Opamma plant in Japan, the automaker's Shunichi Inamijima, vice president of powertrain and EV engineering, shared Nissan's plans to bring a solid-state battery-powered EV to market by the end of 2028.
SABERS, as this portfolio of innovations is named, refers to Solid-state Architecture Batteries for Enhanced Rechargeability and Safety. Developed jointly at NASA’s Glenn, Langley and Ames Research Centers, SABERS includes several advanced material, manufacturing and computational design innovations that enable a new paradigm in battery performance. The primary target application is next-generation electric aviation propulsion systems, yet SABERS will benefit other applications, too.
University of Chicago Pritzker Molecular Engineering Professor Y. Shirley Meng’s Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion (LESC) has created the world’s first anode-free sodium solid-state battery.
As companies continue to trumpet their next-gen EV battery tech, it seems like new chemistries face more momentum from the established champ, lithium-ion. There's no shortage of alternatives to lithium-ion EV batteries in development. From lithium-iron phosphate to sodium-ion to multiple solid-state chemistries, companies are racing to perfect these technologies and figure out how to manufacture them at scale. But to an outside observer, it can feel like breathless coverage of future battery technology is much ado about not much. Lithium-ion batteries seem to have all the momentum, seeing as they're the power supply of choice for most EV manufacturers. And if there's anything that's true in the automotive industry, it's how hard it is to buck momentum. Here are just a few of the big issues lithium-ion batteries have in their favor: Already built factories that manufacture batteries and face tremendous costs to retool for a different technology. An economy of scale that has driven down
The 1915 Detroit Electric Brougham was powered by lead-acid batteries, and so was the first generation of the General Motors EV1 back in 1996. The 1915 car could reportedly travel 80 miles (129 km) on a single charge, and the EV1 wasn’t much better, with a range of 70 to 100 miles (113 to 161 km).
Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a new lithium metal battery that can be charged and discharged at least 6,000 times — more than any other pouch battery cell — and can be recharged in a matter of minutes.
As current courses through a battery, its materials erode over time. Mechanical influences such as stress and strain affect this trajectory, although their impacts on battery efficacy and longevity are not fully understood.
Solid-state batteries are facing a reckoning as OEMs attempt to commercialize the technology. The 1915 Detroit Electric Brougham was powered by lead-acid batteries, and so was the first generation of the General Motors EV1 back in 1996. The 1915 car could reportedly travel 80 miles (129 km) on a single charge, and the EV1 wasn't much better, with a range of 70 to 100 miles (113 to 161 km). However, today's lithium-ion batteries are routinely able to provide ranges of 300 miles (483 km) and outliers like the Lucid Air Grand Touring offer more than 500 miles (805 km) of range. But traditional li-ion chemistry also has its limitations, and researchers now have the funding, including from the Biden Administration, to deliver something better.
Doctor Sergiy Kalnaus and his team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a framework for designing solid-state batteries that focuses on their underlying mechanics.
A team from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Florida State University has designed a new blueprint for solid-state batteries that are less dependent on specific chemical elements, particularly critical metals that are challenging to source due to supply chain issues. Their work could advance solid-state batteries that are efficient and affordable.
By the end of 2023 there will be 10 Chinese electric passenger vehicles using advanced semi-solid-state batteries (ASSB) - an industry-first application for EVs and a milestone for vehicle electrification, according to Paul Haelterman, North American VP at Autodatas, a vehicle benchmarking and research firm. It's “a huge step for the industry's production pursuit of all-solid-state batteries,” Haelterman told SAE Media ahead of his presentation on China's EV market at SAE's WCX 2023 conference in Detroit. A semi-solid-state battery can be one in which one electrode does not contain a liquid electrolyte and the other electrode does. Or it can be a battery in which the mass or volume of the solid electrolyte in the monomer accounts for half of the total mass or volume of the electrolyte in the monomer. Some battery experts view semi-solid-state as a compromise technology, offering a faster route to scale, but is heavy and requires more volume.
Battery engineers targeting electric vehicles (EVs) continue to research designs with solid-state electrolyte because of the alluring twin promises of significantly higher energy densities – which lead to longer driving range – and greatly enhanced safety that comes with eliminating liquidous electrolytes. Additional presumed advantages for solid-state batteries are quicker recharging and longer lifespan – not to mention the potential to reduce the amount of critical, high-cost minerals required for lithium-ion battery chemistries.
Lithium-ion batteries now in widespread use for everything from mobile electronics to electric vehicles rely on a liquid electrolyte to carry ions back and forth between electrodes within the battery during charge and discharge cycles. The liquid uniformly coats the electrodes, allowing free movement of the ions.
Battery development experts from the auto industry and rapidly expanding startup companies concurred at the recent Battery and Electrification Summit (presented by Battery Technology and SAE International) that “disruptive” solid-state and other battery designs are poised to begin playing a role in electric vehicles (EVs) and other applications well before the end of this decade. Adoption of solid-state technology is being advanced, several conference presenters reported, by accelerating innovation in the use of new materials — silicon, primarily — for anodes. And some solid-state battery designs propose to eliminate anodes altogether.
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