How The Next Batteries Will Change The World.
The entire kind of arc of human history has really been defined by how we harness and capture energy. Initially we started with leveraging things like fire and then later coal and petroleum fuel sources for energy needs. And really the great opportunity going forward is this idea that we can capture renewable energy sources, store that energy in batteries and then use that to power our lives.
Advances in battery design over the past few decades have made modern technology possible, but it’s not enough. We need better, cheaper more energy dense batteries if we are going to make electric cars ubiquitous and save the planet. Now the companies are on the verge of battery breakthroughs that could change the world. “The batteries industries have been kind of stuck making batteries one way for like 50 years and we think it’s the time for that to change.” – Enovix
Battery Structure
A battery looks like a black box quite literally sometimes but inside it is a very complex mixture of chemicals. There are four components, two electrodes – cathode, anode, separator and a liquid electrolyte typically. And the electrolyte’s job is to be able to shuttle ions between the two electrodes and that’s what charges the battery and that’s what allows the battery to be then discharge and produce power. Among the everyday technologies, batteries are perhaps one of the oldest because batteries were invented even before electricity was invented which is to say there was no way to generate electricity until somebody made a battery and that was back in 1799 by an Italian scientist named Volta. And what he created was actually called a voltaic pile. It wasn’t even called a battery backup then and it was literally a pile of two different types of metals, in this case it was copper and zinc separated by typically a piece of cardboard that was dipped in vinegar.
To get a feel for how a battery let’s go. Keep a simple aluminum foil at the bottom so that you are able to test whether the battery is working or not and on top you put a copper sheet and so now you have to dip the coffee filter into a solution of salt and water then you put your coffee filter then place the zinc sheet on top. You also have a voltmeter which basically will be able to measure the voltage that this battery will have. This set up will give you around 0.74 volts. Now you can connect a copper cable on either ends and you could solider that on, then connect it to say an LED light and that should light up.
Illustration : Standard Batteries
The more cells you pile on the higher the voltage. Batteries have come a long way since the voltaic pile but they’re still made up of the full basic components anode, cathode, separator and electrolyte. The current state of the art lithium-ion battery is small, light and relatively powerful making everything from mobile devices to electric cars possible. But in order to make de-carbonization a reality, batteries need to get much better.
Race
Among the different things about the batteries that still need to be improved is not just the amount of energy they can store but they also have to do it safely. Batteries also need to be charged more quickly and finally batteries still aren’t cheap enough. They probably need to be half the price to be able to compete with the gasoline powered engine. To accomplish all that a number of companies are going inside the black box and tinkering with those basic four components, hoping to jump start the next generation of batteries, history tells us that batteries have a long history of pretty slow improvement on the order of 4% to 5% a year. Think we’re one of the few companies that are actually trying to do something pretty revolutionary in this space.
Harold Rust Company, Enovix based just south of San Francisco is making one seemingly small tweak to the lithium-ion battery. Replacing the anode typically made of carbon with silicon. So the major advantage of silicon is it has three times the energy density of carbon which it replaces so that allows you to pack more stuff in your battery and drive up energy density. But silicon well, it’s a great anode suffers from a bunch of problems and the biggest of which is the fact that it expands 300%. Easy way to think about it is when you’re charging a cell the silicon tends to expand and when you discharge it, it compresses or contracts. That’s a potentially battery busting problem, but in Enovix claims to have found a solution.
Charging Status
A complex method of arranging the batteries components that keeps the silicon under pressure. This allows us to basically manage that swelling without any macroscopic growth of the battery. A silicon anode battery could store about 50% more energy than what’s currently on the market which could mean we’ll be seeing lighter electronic with longer battery life in the near future. Company has been actively sampling batteries over the last two years to customers.
Elsewhere in Silicon Valley, another company – QuantumScape is working on an even more ambitious battery design. The company started with the mission of trying to narrow the gap that they have in combustion engine based vehicles and EVs. And the company recognized that the key there was to build a better battery. They could usher in a new era of transportation. 15 minutes charge times, better life performance and even lower costs. It turns out all those problems can be addressed if you just switch from a carbon or carbon silicon anode not to a lithium metal anode.
Usually the lithium in lithium ion batteries only refers to the molecule was shuttling between the cathode and anode. Making anode itself out of lithium could double the energy density of the battery, a much bigger leap than a silicon anode battery, like Enovix’s. The idea that QuantumScape is using is not a new idea, it existed even before lithium-ion lithium metal batteries. There is just one small problem. Unfortunately they are not safe. Typically inside a battery the electrolyte is liquid but an liquid electrolyte for a lithium metal battery causes the lithium metal to degrade and even sometimes even short and catch fire.
QuantumScape
QuantumScape’s main goal was to try and replace what is a liquid electrolyte inside the battery with a solid electrolyte. The problem is that no one has been able to make one that conducts well enough with the liquid. It wasn’t clear that even the material existed in nature that could meet these requirements. So the QuantumScape had to explore a wide range of materials, but luckily nature had material that meets requirement and the team was able to find it. It’s a literally a solid material, ceramic material but it is kind of a very special material because lithium-ions can just right through it like they’re on a highway.
EVs Charging Points
This single powered cell is all QuantumScape was able to show us of their solid state batteries. Ultimately they’ll stack 100 of these together to make a complete battery pack. The company is still a few years from selling a commercial product, but the performance improvements they’re predicting would be revolutionary.
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