Li-ion batteries: news, progress, history and background

AIST team developing Li-air capacitor-battery targeted for EVs : A team from Japan’s AIST ( National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology ) reports on the development of a “lithium–air capacitor–battery based on a hybrid electrolyte ” in a paper in the RSC journal Energy & Environmental Science . The team had earlier investigated a hybrid electrolyte lithium–air battery, in which a lithium anode in a non-aqueous electrolyte and an air-catalytic cathode in an aqueous electrolyte solution were separated by a ceramic LISICON film. ( Earlier post .) As reported then, the lithium-air cell showed a continuous cathode discharge capacity of 50,000 mAh g -1 (per unit mass of the carbon, catalyst and binder). By comparison, conventional Li-ion batteries offer 120-150 mAh g -1 (active material + conduction assisting carbon + binder), and conventional lithium-air cells offer 700-3,000 mAh g -1 . In the present work, a capacitor electrode was put in the non-aque...

Ioxus Inc. is an up and comer in the energy storage industry that has plans this Monday to announce a new hybrid storage device that it hopes will radically alter batteries used in the auto, medical, and consumer electronics industries. The teased product is said to be roughly the size of a typical C-cell battery and combines the fast charge / discharge benefits of ultracapacitors with the impressive energy-to-weight ratio of a lithium-ion electrode. As a result, Ioxus says the hybrid devices can store more than double the energy of traditional ultracapacitors and charge in a matter of seconds. The catch is that the hybrids have shorter life spans of 20,000 cycles compared to millions of cycles for typical ultracapacitors. We're also taking this with a grain of skepticism until these claims are proven in the field. Some brief digging though did unearth an article written by MIT researchers and published in Scientific American last year that discusses the possible benefits of s...

One of the means that electrically powered vehicles used to maximize their range is regenerative braking where the kinetic energy of the vehicle is recaptured during deceleration and than released during acceleration. The problem is that most batteries can't absorb energy quickly enough to capture all the available energy. This is where capacitors have an advantage since they can absorb energy a lot faster than batteries and do it a lot more times. Unfortunately the total energy capacity is limited, which also limits their usefulness. While a lithium ion battery pack could contain enough energy to drive a vehicle a couple of hundred miles, an ultra-capacitor pack would be lucky to get a few miles.   Original post