are solid state batteries the next big thing?

someone tl;dw that 15 minute video for me since I can't exactly skim through it. These things real now? Or is it "researchers in a lab" type of thing?
 
TL;DW: It's just in a lab for now, but very promising and backed by a team that has been instrumental in some of the biggest advances in computers and batteries (Nobel prizewinning level).
 
sfsuphysics said:
These things real now? Or is it "researchers in a lab" type of thing?
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I first started hearing about solid-state batteries in 2017. Dyson spent a bunch of money on it (along with their car concept), and more recently Volkswagen said they want to start using them in vehicles in the next 5 or 6 years as production ramps up.

Supposedly there is some low-volume production underway in China, so it's not just a lab project anymore.

westrock2000 said:
They come free with the purchases of an Hewlett Packard Memristor Solid State Drive. Supplies are limited though.
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Seems like every day there's some new battery tech, and while most of them don't pan out as successfully as hoped these ideas do make their way into production. Battery cost/safety/capacity keeps improving.
 
Yep- and (if this is the same video I saw a few days ago) the solid glass electrolite looks like it will make Li-on batteries easier to make, faster to charge, and last longer. All at once- might be a huge deal.
 
I worked for a startup in Denver who was building these things back in 2014. We were using thin-film vapor deposition. Finished batteries were about the size and thickness of a postage stamp, 4V and something like 50mAh.

The neat thing about them is that they were able to accept a charge from just about any power source imaginable, including solar, vibration, thermal, and electromagnetic background noise (emi) if hooked up to a proper collector. They could also be recharged several dozen times more than your typical li-ion battery before losing capacity.

The not-neat thing about them is that we were averaging about 30% yield and then the owner spun the company off to China. =(
 
Its important a new battery tech is recyclable using an acceptable process and energy cost, and more considerations:
Availability of resources and need for them in other manufacturing. Do they need elements in short supply?
What to do with spent resources on a continual basis that cannot be recycled from either the battery or the recycling process. There will be some or a lot.
Price, size/energy density, weight, safety, ease of manufacture/recycling, time to charge, number of charge cycles ...

One of the biggest concerns atm is car batteries, we need a ridiculous number and size of battery because the world is rapidly moving away from the ICE engine. Not just cars, lorries, airplanes, ships ...
Almost all of the above criteria we need the best of.
Does this new battery cut it?
 
VanGoghComplex said:
I worked for a startup in Denver who was building these things back in 2014. We were using thin-film vapor deposition. Finished batteries were about the size and thickness of a postage stamp, 4V and something like 50mAh.

The neat thing about them is that they were able to accept a charge from just about any power source imaginable, including solar, vibration, thermal, and electromagnetic background noise (emi) if hooked up to a proper collector. They could also be recharged several dozen times more than your typical li-ion battery before losing capacity.

The not-neat thing about them is that we were averaging about 30% yield and then the owner spun the company off to China. =(
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Bummer.
Often hear of this kind of tech but it usually fails because of some kind of cost or resource our fab related detail.
 
DWolvin said:
Yep- and (if this is the same video I saw a few days ago) the solid glass electrolite looks like it will make Li-on batteries easier to make, faster to charge, and last longer. All at once- might be a huge deal.
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am i the only one that thinks that the glass used will make the things fragile, though? especially for car batteries i mean if you get in an accident that thin piece of glass is sure to break or even when you drop your phone. I guess they can cushion the phone batteries to a certain extent but glass??!

maybe they could use gorilla glass??
 
Exactly- glass comes in many forms. Don't get too worried until it's getting to production. I've seen glass pull some crazy stuff- bent in a circle one direction but super rigid in the other. It's might even be metallic glass, which would be similar to what they make golf clubs out of...
 
Solidstate batteries have been in use for a long time now, and they've been touted as the Next Big Thing in batteries for even longer. I wouldn't hold my breath at this point.
 
If they can ever get the production costs and manufacturing rate to a place where they are cost efficient then yes they will be the next big thing. Until then they are a cool lab project.
 
Thunderdolt said:
They're used all over the place in embedded and mobile electronics. Basically used to maintain sleep states in applications where a primary cell doesn't make sense. They're typically under 10mAh capacity.
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One market my old employer was targeting was RFID chips. RFID chips are normally passive devices - they harvest enough energy from the radio waves scanning them to broadcast a response. However, add a small battery to them, and they are suddenly able to broadcast over a much longer distance.

Shipping companies (like UPS) could use the tech to ID packages. Then, instead of barcode scanning each individual item at their distribution centers, they could just drive an entire truck through an RFID scanner and instantly inventory the whole thing.

I don't know enough about logistics to say whether this would be a time saver or not - UPS would still have to encode and apply the RFID chips - but it was something my old company was trying to get into.
 
VanGoghComplex said:
One market my old employer was targeting was RFID chips. RFID chips are normally passive devices - they harvest enough energy from the radio waves scanning them to broadcast a response. However, add a small battery to them, and they are suddenly able to broadcast over a much longer distance.

Shipping companies (like UPS) could use the tech to ID packages. Then, instead of barcode scanning each individual item at their distribution centers, they could just drive an entire truck through an RFID scanner and instantly inventory the whole thing.

I don't know enough about logistics to say whether this would be a time saver or not - UPS would still have to encode and apply the RFID chips - but it was something my old company was trying to get into.
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seems like a lot of e-waste though if EVERY package had a battery & rfid chip because think about it, what do you do with the barcodes on packages you get now. you throw them in the trash. plus you still have to have someone sort the packages and load vehicles.

now i could see them add them to credit card rfids so stores can better stalk the people that come through there. (would be like a real life "cookie") I'm sure Walmart would love that to go along w/ the facial recognition camera's they use.

but thunderbolt said they had "been in use for a long time now". I was wondering what ss batteries are already being used in now. i really doubt anything. to quote wikipedia "Solid-state batteries are traditionally expensive to make[35] and manufacturing processes are noted to be difficult to scale, requiring expensive vacuum deposition equipment.[7] It was estimated in 2012 that, based on then-current technology, a 20 Ah solid-state battery cell would cost US$100,000, and a high-range electric car would require 800 to 1,000 of such cells.[7] Cost has impeded the adoption of solid-state batteries in other areas, such as smartphones."

the cost beats out any real reason to use them up to this point. but they have been making some serious breakthroughs as of late.
 
VanGoghComplex said:
One market my old employer was targeting was RFID chips. RFID chips are normally passive devices - they harvest enough energy from the radio waves scanning them to broadcast a response. However, add a small battery to them, and they are suddenly able to broadcast over a much longer distance.

Shipping companies (like UPS) could use the tech to ID packages. Then, instead of barcode scanning each individual item at their distribution centers, they could just drive an entire truck through an RFID scanner and instantly inventory the whole thing.

I don't know enough about logistics to say whether this would be a time saver or not - UPS would still have to encode and apply the RFID chips - but it was something my old company was trying to get into.
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in theory the idea's sound, in reality it doesn't always work out that way. the up front cost is too high since you're talking about upgrading every distribution center over the course of 8-10 months so that on the same day they can switch over yet keeping the old system for up to a week to clear out any packages on the old system. there's also to many potential failure points with to many security issues.. reality is labors cheap with a turn over rate that's high enough that they never really pay much over minimum wage other than drivers.
 
d3athf1sh said:
seems like a lot of e-waste though if EVERY package had a battery & rfid chip because think about it, what do you do with the barcodes on packages you get now. you throw them in the trash. plus you still have to have someone sort the packages and load vehicles.

now i could see them add them to credit card rfids so stores can better stalk the people that come through there. (would be like a real life "cookie") I'm sure Walmart would love that to go along w/ the facial recognition camera's they use.

but thunderbolt said they had "been in use for a long time now". I was wondering what ss batteries are already being used in now. i really doubt anything. to quote wikipedia "Solid-state batteries are traditionally expensive to make[35] and manufacturing processes are noted to be difficult to scale, requiring expensive vacuum deposition equipment.[7] It was estimated in 2012 that, based on then-current technology, a 20 Ah solid-state battery cell would cost US$100,000, and a high-range electric car would require 800 to 1,000 of such cells.[7] Cost has impeded the adoption of solid-state batteries in other areas, such as smartphones."

the cost beats out any real reason to use them up to this point. but they have been making some serious breakthroughs as of late.
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At the scale of a 100kWh pack for a car, you and wikipedia are correct that they absolutely do not make sense for financial reasons. If the wiki numbers are correct, that would be a $135 million pack. Cars, however, are 6-sigma outliers when it comes to power needs. Simple keep-alive circuits for, say, an embedded system's BIOS or for an accelerometer monitor, tend to be more around 0.1-5.0mAh. This, not cars, is where the tech has been in use for years. At potentially $1, the battery is more expensive than a typical coin cell, but that's ok for many applications.
 
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