History of Lithium-Ion Batteries
Rechargeable battery evolution accelerated as the world transitioned to instruments enabled by silicon microchip technology from those of bulky electrical components. Mobile devices were designed to be powered by lightweight energy storage systems. The development of batteries for this rapidly evolving market was challenging:
• The nickel cadmium battery had been the only option for modern electronics for many years. It was a great improvement over carbon batteries.
• Later, nickel-hydride batteries became the technology of choice.
• Lithium-ion batteries became available in the 1990s, offering higher energy densities. This technology won out nickel-hydride.
The lithium-ion rechargeable battery offered advantages that were previously unavailable:
• Lithium is the lightest of all metals
• It had the largest electrochemical potential
• It provided the greatest energy content per unit volume
• It had no memory effect
• Its energy leakage rate was less than half that of NiCd and NiMH
• The first of its type was developed by Sony in 1990 with enough cycles to be usable for rechargeable batteries
o Mass production took place in 1991
o Panasonic and Sanyo quickly developed similar batteries that were on the market by 1994
Big advances in a mature industry like batteries were hard to find. Advances in the field focused only on finding slightly better materials or thinning the layers to improve performance.
Pre-A123 Systems: History of Lithium-Ion battery Innovation
Pre-A123 research group
Professor Yet-Ming Chiang directed a mid-sized research group at MIT that focused on design, synthesis and characterization of advanced inorganic materials; particularly toward electromechanically and electrochemically active materials. These materials can be defined as being capable of converting electrical energy into mechanical work, and of converting chemical energy into electrical work.
Chiang’s group began researching better lithium cathode materials in the mid-1990s. By early 2000, the group began wondering if there might be a new way to push the thickness limitations of battery cells. The wondered if battery layers could form themselves based on the Hamaker Constant for Different Materials. Materials in this case are very small particles. The Hamaker Constant is the measure of force between materials.
Hamaker Constant applied to designing an innovative battery system
Chiang describes how this related to the challenge of revolutionizing battery technology:
• “…the Hamaker Constant can have a negative value and cause two materials (particles) to repel each other if immersed in the right medium… we discovered and designed materials systems that organized themselves into an electrolyte separator between the anode and cathode.
http://www.army.mil/article/79388/ (accessed March 16, 2014). Tiwari, G.N., and R.K. Mishra. Advanced Renewable Energy Sources. Cambridge, U.K.: RSC Publishing, 2011. U.S. Congressional Record - Senate.
Askeland, Donald R., and Pradeep P. Fulay. The Science and Engineering of Materials. Pacific Grove, CA: Thomson Brooks/Cole, 2003. Print.
These reasons are why Lithium-Ion Batteries are some of the most viable options when designing new gadgets. But, the structure of these batteries are why these batteries are being used for new gadgets. A Lithium-Ion Batt...
The drawing demonstrates a film design with exchanging cation-particular (1) and anion-specific (2) layers. A cation-specific film (cation-trade layer) allows just positive particles to move through it. An anion-particular film (anion-trade layer) allows just entry to adversely charged particles. At every end of the layer stack, terminals (a cathode (3) and an anode (4)) are put, supplying an all-around circulated electrical field of direct current over the film stack. Between each film, spacers are set. Spacers ensure that there is room between films for the fluid procedure streams to stream along the layer surfaces.
This is the most common battery that people use today like Energizer or Duracle batteries. The most common form of a primary cell is the Leclanche cell, invented by a French chemist Georges Leclanche in the 1860s. The electrolyte for this battery consisted of a mixture of ammonium chloride and zinc chloride made into a paste. The negative electrode is zinc, and is the outside shell of the cell, and the positive electrode is a carbon rod that runs through the center of the cell. This rod is surrounded by a mixture of carbon and manganese dioxide. This battery produces about 1.5 volts.
the discovery of carbon nanotubes, the strongest material known to man, a possible solution has been found.
Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our and future generations. I intend to combat this man-made disaster by applying materials science for sustainable technologies. Ever since reading “Stuff Matters” by Mark Miodownik, I have been fascinated by materials and their seemingly boundless potential to improve the world. Every breakthrough, either creating new materials or a developing a deeper understanding of old ones, shakes the course of modern progress. Sustainable practices have been slow to make their way into society, but this is improving on two fronts.
Paper, invented more than 2,000 years ago, has severed us with multiple purposes. Amazingly, this extensively, broad use item has been discovered for its ability to absorb carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires films into its porous material to conduct electricity in a completely new way. However, paper is not the only object discovered for its ability to demeanor electricity. Viruses have also successful been able to conduct electricity and function as batteries. This discovery of electricity in a new, lightweight form has brought wonders whether these objects could someday power large appliances such as cars or help improve pacemakers located within a body. Could these lightweight discovers of electricity improve future appliances?
Some examples of batteries are zinc carbon, alkaline, button batteries, lead-acid, nickel-cadmium, nickel-metal-hydride, and lithium-ion. The three main types of batteries are zinc primary and secondary batteries. Even though batteries can be made with all sorts of different chemical electrolytes and electrodes, there is only primary and secondary, which are the two main types. Primary batteries are ordinary, disposable ones that can’t normally be recharged (Woodford, 2017, para.18). Secondary batteries can be recharged, sometimes hundreds of times (Woodford, 2017, para.18). The first rechargeable battery was made in 1859 by the French physicist Gaston Plate created a battery using two rolled sheets of lead submerged in sulfuric acid (Hymel, n.d., para.10). You can recharge them by sending a current in the opposite direction it normally flows in. When you charge your cell phone battery you are just running the battery in reverse. Alessandro Volta created the voltaic pile which was a stack of alternating zinc and silver disks, separated by brine-soaked cloth. The pile consisted as many as 30 disks. In imitation of the electric organ from a torpedo fish. It worked by connecting a wire to both ends of the pile, a steady current will flow. Volta found out that if he used different types of metals it could change the amount of current that is produced, and that he could increase the current by adding disks to the stack. In a letter dated March 20, 1800 which was addressed to joseph Banks, Volta first reported the electric pile. An advantage to them are the ease of manufacture and good mechanical stability. The cylindrical cell has good cycling ability, offers a long calendar life and is economical (“Types of Battery Cells”,2017). Cylindrical cells are heavy and have a low packaging density due to space cavities. Typical applications are
cell we use today. The positive pole is a rode of carbon embedded in a
The lead acid battery was first discovered and invented by a French physicist called Gaston Plante in 1859. The lead acid battery was the first type of battery that was rechargeable.
Personal Statement Yun Yu Lai Macromolecule Science & Engineering Thanks to my family background, I have been immersed in the atmosphere of novel technology, particularly in the field of material science. My mother has worked as a project manager at the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), Material & Chemical Laboratories (MCL), which is served as the heart of high-tech research center in Taiwan. I always remember our family dinner time that she shares with us the latest prototype from MCL (E.g. liquid-crystal display, polarizer, and organic light emitter diode). It is an unforgettable memory that you could recognize the LCD monitor in the era of cathode ray tube (CRT) television.
In recent years, electrochemical supercapacitors (ECs) have been extensively studied as attractive energy storage devices. They have potential applications in portable electronics and electric vehicles because of their high power energy densities and long cyclic life [8, 101, 102]. Based on the nature of the charge-storage mechanism and active materials, electrochemical capacitors can be classified into two types: electrochemical double layer capacitors (EDLCs) and redox supercapacitors (pseudocapacitors). EDLCs utilizing carbon-based active materials, such as activated carbon (AC) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with charge stored at electrode-electrolyte interface, are currently the most commonly used devices [2]. On the other hand, pseudocapacitors or redox capacitors use fast and reversible faradaic surface reactions for charge storage. Conducting polymers [103, 104] and transition metal oxides and hydroxides [81, 105, 106] have been investigated as possible electrode materials for redox capacitors. Redox capacitors have drawn much more attention than EDLCs due to their high theoreti...
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