L-ion with 10X the capacity!!!

mdocod

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sounds good.... something strange though:

Chan grew the nanowires on a stainless steel substrate, providing an excellent electrical connection.
(from the article)

Stainless steel is about the worst conductor of any metal available, it does work as a conductor and probably works great in this application, but this is a strange statement to make IMO.
 

TorchBoy

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Do you think they could maybe be talking it up just a little to attract investors? I suppose I should read it...

Cui said that a patent application has been filed. He is considering formation of a company or an agreement with a battery manufacturer.

So maybe. It still sounds exciting, and just what electric vehicles need. I've heard that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, so I'd like to know a few other details, like how many charge cycles it'll last, how physically robust it is, and how dangerous it might be if it blew up.
 

Helmut.G

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:eek:
This would really be too good to be true:rock:
I'm wondering when this technology will become capable of 'normal' use, what will it cost, how long will the batteries work, are they going to be usable for high current applications, how efficient will the charging be ...:popcorn:
waiting for more information
 

monkeyboy

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This sounds pretty exciting.

The article says "10 times the amount of electricity", you would expect physorg to be a little more scientific than that. Clearly they mean 10x the energy or 10x the capacity. Before you get too excited, remember the group at MIT who developed similar technology? They reckoned they could get 7x the capacity but their first line of products (A123 systems) only have half the capacity of current Li-ion. I'm sure they are capable of more but it's probably a long way off.

hopefully we'll be seeing higher capacity cells from this group in the not so distant future.
 
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Rzr800

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If this turns out to be a winner and make any money; it'll be interesting to see just how long these patents are honored or who gets what in the end at Stanford, Berkely and even Hitachi.
 

VidPro

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from: http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2008/january9/nanowire-010908.html

Stanford researchers have found a way to use silicon nanowires to reinvent the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power laptops, iPods, video cameras, cell phones, and countless other devices.
The new version, developed through research led by Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, produces 10 times the amount of electricity of existing lithium-ion, known as Li-ion, batteries. A laptop that now runs on battery for two hours could operate for 20 hours, a boon to ocean-hopping business travelers.
"It's not a small improvement," Cui said. "It's a revolutionary development."
The breakthrough is described in a paper, "High-performance lithium battery anodes using silicon nanowires," published online Dec. 16 in Nature Nanotechnology, written by Cui, his graduate chemistry student Candace Chan and five others.
The greatly expanded storage capacity could make Li-ion batteries attractive to electric car manufacturers. Cui suggested that they could also be used in homes or offices to store electricity generated by rooftop solar panels.
"Given the mature infrastructure behind silicon, this new technology can be pushed to real life quickly," Cui said.
The electrical storage capacity of a Li-ion battery is limited by how much lithium can be held in the battery's anode, which is typically made of carbon. Silicon has a much higher capacity than carbon, but also has a drawback.
Silicon placed in a battery swells as it absorbs positively charged lithium atoms during charging, then shrinks during use (i.e., when playing your iPod) as the lithium is drawn out of the silicon. This expand/shrink cycle typically causes the silicon (often in the form of particles or a thin film) to pulverize, degrading the performance of the battery.
Cui's battery gets around this problem with nanotechnology. The lithium is stored in a forest of tiny silicon nanowires, each with a diameter one-thousandth the thickness of a sheet of paper. The nanowires inflate four times their normal size as they soak up lithium. But, unlike other silicon shapes, they do not fracture.
Research on silicon in batteries began three decades ago. Chan explained: "The people kind of gave up on it because the capacity wasn't high enough and the cycle life wasn't good enough. And it was just because of the shape they were using. It was just too big, and they couldn't undergo the volume changes."
Then, along came silicon nanowires. "We just kind of put them together," Chan said.
For their experiments, Chan grew the nanowires on a stainless steel substrate, providing an excellent electrical connection. "It was a fantastic moment when Candace told me it was working," Cui said.
Cui said that a patent application has been filed. He is considering formation of a company or an agreement with a battery manufacturer. Manufacturing the nanowire batteries would require "one or two different steps, but the process can certainly be scaled up," he added. "It's a well understood process."
Also contributing to the paper in Nature Nanotechnology were Halin Peng and Robert A. Huggins of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford, Gao Liu of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Kevin McIlwrath and Xiao Feng Zhang of the electron microscope division of Hitachi High Technologies in Pleasanton, Calif.

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2008/january9/gifs/battery-nanowires.jpg
and the pics.
 

PhotonBoy

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battery-nanowires.jpg
 

mdocod

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Re: Stanford's nanowire battery holds 10 times the charge of existing ones

seems to be the 3rd thread discussing this.
 

leukos

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:popcorn: Well I hope this isn't just more hype, but it would be nice to have something like my G3 run for 8 hours on the same set of batteries. I think some of us would come close to having our holy grail lights.
 

DM51

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Thanks for merging these threads.

It is a fascinating prospect, but the nano-technology sounds somewhat fragile and I suspect it will be quite a while before we see it on the open market - and then initially at much lower capacities than 10x currently available Li-Ion cells.

We are used to Li-Ion cells operating at discharge rates of up to 2C, but I wonder whether that will be the same for these. My guess would be that much lower C rates will apply.

Safety will be a BIG issue with these, with so much power crammed into such a small space.
 

hopkins

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Hi DM51
After rereading the scientific paper seems its a wonder ordinary lithiums
work so well. They point out how the charge/drain cycle breaks up
-crumbles- the guts of the lithium cell thus reducing the paths for electrons
to flow. All they're doing is adding billions of new paths with a 'forest' of
nano-wires. Agree it seems fragile but we can get our hopes up.

I get goosebumps thinking a 10X capacity AA lithium cell in my flashlight!
Getting close to the power of god.:poof::faint:
\
YEShttp://www.mitbbs.com/mitbbs_article.php?board=NanoST&id=29990370&ap=449
 

TorchBoy

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Is there a maximum capacity for a given size of battery in a similar way there's a maximum efficacy for LEDs?
 
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