Future batteries - Nobel 2019 for Lithium ion battery ..

 Battery tech. would not have grown but for them..

In this article we are trying to trace the past and present of energy storage, as we know the future development of the human race depends to a large extent on how we are able to use energy to power our daily technology backed lives.  

Click here for an excellent video explanation of how the Li-ion battery works .. 

The history behind the portable energy storage through chemical batteries dates back to the early 19th century when it was found that electrons could be made to flow from the an electrode to another and this electron flow could be captured to emulate the flow of electricity.

The Lead acid battery developed by the French Physicist Gaston Plante in 1859 is still being used in automobiles and is one of the biggest inventions for more than a century in portable power. The automobiles used lead acid batteries for lighting and the initial spark to light the fuel, but not for running the heavy duty vehicle.

All electronic goods need less power and disposable chemical batteries have been a source of power for many years with portable electronics like the camera, music player and so on. When miniaturisation became the need of the hour, the focus shifted on how to increase the speciific energy capacity of batteries, ie., developing smaller and smaller batteries generating more and more of power, storing more and more power and finally sharing more and more of this power .. The research focused on finding better materials for the Anode and the Cathode.

The Lithium-ion battery has been one of the greatest discoveries in the past ten years as it has brought the miniaturisation revolution to almost fruition.

Most of the people seem to get confused with how, the same anode and cathode, seem to take different polarity in the activities of the battery. In the charging phase, the electrons move from the Anode to the Cathode. In the discharge phase, electrons move from the Cathode to the anode.

By a process called intercalation, ions can be inserted between layers of metals giving them a higher charge. Intercalation is the reversible inclusion or insertion of a molecule (or ion) into materials with layered structures. - wikipedia.org. 

Prof. Goodenough worked on substituting metal sulphide Cathode with metal oxide Cathode which were intercalated with Lithium ions but did not collapse when the Lithium ions were discharged. Goodenough's battery was twice as powerful as Whittihgham's battery and could be charged and discharged. By 1980, this triggered the wireless electronics revolution because of its low weight and portability. By intercalating the element layers with positively charged ions we can create positively charged electrodes which will attract the electrons during the charging phase. 

Yoshino's contribution to the development of the modern day Lithium-ion battery is that he replaced the graphite electrolyte in the battery with the more stable Petroleum coke. This brought out the latest Lithium-ion batteries which could be recharged over multiple cycles as the electrolyte did not collapse and thus had a longer life. Pure Lithium which was very volatile resulted in accidents and with Yoshino's design it was replaced by Lithium Cobalt oxide which was more stable, safe and could be manufactured in a variety of sizes that could fit into miniature electronics devices.

TESLA is using the same Lithium ion batteries which contain Colbalt, mostly mined from the Cobalt mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa. While a mobile phone battery may have upto 10g of Cobalt, a laptop battery can have upto 500 g of Cobalt and a car battery upto 10 kg of Cobalt.

Collapsing battery prices, courtesy Scientific American, Dec '18

While research is progressing around the world chemical engineering laboratories for finding better electrodes and intercalating materials, we can be assured that the world of miniature electronics is also bound to grow with potable power sources, especially in the defense and aviation sectors.

Like the automatic watches and battery powered watches moved to the Quartz crystal slid-state type watches presently, we can expect the batteries of the future to move from the electrode cathode variety of present day to the solid state type. 

The above graph shows how from $1000 per KWh in 2010, we have moved to $200 in 2020, it is expected the cost will stumble down to $80/KWh by 2030. Then only we can say EV can have a parity with cars. Magnesium-ion batteries which can store double the capacity of Lithium ion batteries are the future of batteries according to Scientific American. 

In short, we can say that the future of batteries is not the electrode and electrolyte type, though for the time being it is the best and has even got the Nobel Prize of 2019, in the long future it is going to be solid state device. 

George..

Reference :

1. Koshy, Jacob, How did the Li-ion battery set off a technology revolution, The Hindu, 13 October, 2019, Last accessed 14 October, 2019.

2. Scientific American editorial staff, Batteries - beyond Lithium, Scientific American, Dec 2018, Last accessed Oct, 2019