The hottest commodity on the planet right now is not oil or coffee but lithium, according to a recent article on OilPrice.com. The ballooning battery market is expected to drive demand for the light white metal, and mining companies, battery producers and automakers are scrambling to secure supplies. Goldman Sachs predicts that for every 1%… Read more »
Search Results Found For: "lithium metal"
Stanford team develops Li-metal anodes
Lithium-metal anodes are the favored solution for next-generation Li-air or Li-sulfur batteries for various reasons, including their high specific capacity (theoretically tenfold higher than graphite). However, safety issues resulting from dendrite formation and instability caused by volume expansion have slowed the development of commercially viable solutions. In “Composite lithium metal anode by melt infusion of… Read more »
Sony working on high-capacity lithium-sulfur and magnesium-sulfur batteries
Sony, the company that introduced the world’s first commercial lithium-ion battery in 1991, is already well along the road to a Li-ion replacement, according to Nikkei Technology. The company is reportedly developing high-capacity lithium-sulfur and magnesium-sulfur batteries, aiming for a 40% increase in volumetric capacity to 1,000 Wh/l, and plans to commercialize the new chemistries… Read more »
Cambridge scientists claim promising lithium-oxygen battery advancements
Cambridge scientists have developed a working demonstrator of a lithium-oxygen battery that is more than 90% efficient, and can be recharged more than 2,000 times. Lithium-oxygen, or lithium-air, has been touted as the ultimate battery technology, because its theoretical energy density is ten times that of lithium-ion solutions. In “Cycling Li-O2 Batteries via LiOH Formation… Read more »
24M introduces semisolid lithium-ion cell claiming half the cost of current technology
Startup 24M has emerged from stealth mode to introduce its semisolid lithium-ion cell, which the company claims will deliver improved performance at half the cost of current Li-ion batteries. “The lithium-ion battery is a brilliant, enabling technology, but its economics are flawed. It’s prohibitively expensive; it’s cumbersome and inefficient to make; and today’s version is… Read more »
Real-time images of lithium dendrite structures could lead to better batteries
Scientists at the DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have captured the first real-time nanoscale images of lithium dendrite structures in lithium-ion batteries. The ORNL team is confident that its research, published in Nano Letters, will be of great benefit to scientists who are experimenting with different ways to tackle the dendrite problem. Dendrites form when… Read more »
Nickel-metal hydride: the battery tech of the future?
Conventional wisdom has it that lithium-ion batteries are the state of the art, and that nickel-metal hydride chemistry, which is used in most conventional hybrids (some of the newer Prius models now use Li-ion), is pretty much obsolete. However, scientists at BASF believe that NiMH technology still has much to offer. According to MIT Technology Review, the… Read more »
Graphene wrapper enhances performance of lithium-sulfur batteries
Lithium-sulfur batteries are of great interest, as they could offer specific energy densities far greater than those of current lithium-ion chemistries. However, current designs are plagued by low efficiency and capacity degradation. A team of researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Beijing Institute of Technology has devised a three-dimensional sandwich-type graphene sheet-sulfur/carbon composite… Read more »
Fraunhofer Institute presents November workshop on lithium-sulfur batteries
The Fraunhofer Institute will hold its third annual workshop on lithium-sulfur batteries in Dresden, Germany, on November 12 and 13. Lithium-sulfur is a leading contender for the battery chemistry of the future, and Fraunhofer believes that novel materials such as nanostructured carbon/sulfur composite cathodes, solid electrolytes and alloy-based anodes will significantly enhance performance. Dr Oliver… Read more »
Stanford team develops stable lithium anode
Are the knights of nanotechnology closing in on the Grail at last? A team of researchers at Stanford University claim that they are, and have chronicled their deeds in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. The valiant engineers report that they have designed a pure lithium anode. “Of all the materials that one might use in an… Read more »