Q&A with LG Chem Power’s CEO: Dr. Prabhakar Patil on how the company became a Li-ion battery front-runner, the economics of building batteries, and why it spends little energy on what comes after lithium. Among Tier 1 automotive suppliers of lithium-ion cells, LG Chem is off to a clear lead, based on the number of announced… Read more »
Search Results Found For: "silicon anode"
SolidEnergy hopes to double EV battery range by 2017
SolidEnergy, an MIT spin-out company commercializing solid electrolyte technology, plans to release a 20 Ah EV battery in 2017, which it says will offer more than two times the range of current Li-ion batteries. The core of SolidEnergy’s technology is a Solid Polymer Ionic Liquid (SPIL) electrolyte, which enables the use of an ultra-thin lithium… Read more »
GM researchers develop improved Li-Sulfur cathode material
A GM R&D team has developed a way to improve the cycling stability and Coulombic efficiency of lithium-sulfur (Li/S) batteries. The new paper, Polydopamine-Coated, Nitrogen-Doped, Hollow Carbon-Sulfur Double-Layered Core-Shell Structure for Improving Lithium-Sulfur Batteries, appears in the ACS journal Nano Letters. Lithium-sulfur chemistry theoretically promises impressive energy capacity, but practical Li-S batteries have been hindered… Read more »
For a better battery, hit the beach!
Who knew? The miracle material that could enable a game-changing battery breakthrough is (drumroll, please)…beach sand. Researchers at the University of California Riverside have created a lithium-ion battery that outperforms the current industry standard by three times, using a nanoscale silicon dioxide anode. “This is the holy grail – a low cost, non-toxic, environmentally friendly… Read more »
A closer look at the semiconductor switch
In this article I’ll be giving an overview of that most important of power electronics components: the semiconductor switch. I’ll first address what a switch is, and then delve into some of the more important compromises and shortcomings that exist in real-world switches that engineers must contend with when designing chargers, motor controllers, DC-DC converters… Read more »
Former Envia Systems execs drop their lawsuit
Things are looking a little brighter for battery startup Envia Systems, as three of the company’s former executives dropped a lawsuit with little explanation. The suit, which was filed last November, alleged that co-founder and CTO Sujeet Kumar created the company using intellectual property that he stole from his previous employer, a nanotech startup called… Read more »
Former Secretary of Energy Steven Chu joins board of Amprius
Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize winner in Physics and the former US Secretary of Energy, has joined the Board of Directors of Amprius, a developer of lithium-ion batteries with operations in California and China. Amprius, co-founded by Stanford Professor Yi Cui, introduced its first generation of batteries in May 2013, and it is now… Read more »
PARC’s new process deposits entire battery cell in one pass for big cost savings
PARC, a Xerox company, has launched a project with the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to demonstrate a new Li-ion battery manufacturing process that could dramatically reduce battery costs and improve performance. The conventional manufacturing process requires that the two halves of a battery be made in two separate steps, and then combined in… Read more »
DOE releases EV Everywhere Grand Challenge Blueprint
The report sets priorities, including numerical objectives, in five key technical areas: batteries, drive systems, vehicle lightweighting, climate control and charging infrastructure.
We need more energy: Envia Systems’ 400 Wh/kg Li-ion cells
Envia Systems crushed the record for energy density of an automotive rechargeable Li-ion battery at 400Wh/kg. Now all the small start-up has to do is partner with everybody, become the industry standard, and change the world. Most of us know the public library as a place to get some free Wi-Fi, meet up with people for… Read more »