3 New Kinds of Battery That Just Might Change the World

Electric car makers are looking for cheaper, lighter, more powerful and durable cells. Electronics makers are looking for more reliable cells that can charge faster and last longer. For makers of medical implants and even wearable technology, it’s a battery small enough to “disappear.” Meanwhile, renewable energy companies are looking for batteries that can charge and discharge thousands and thousands of times and remain stable.

Something I don’t understand is why these new battery types aren’t being built for existing cell sizes. They always seem to be purpose-built for some specific device and the general maker population can’t use them.

The Solid State

Most conventional lithium ion batteries are made of up two electrodes (the anode and cathode), separated by some sort of liquid electrolyte, or the medium that conducts the lithium-ions moving from anode to cathode. The problem is that this electrolyte is very flammable—if it’s damaged or punctured, the battery will catch fire.

Solid state batteries do away with the liquid electrolyte altogether. Instead, they use a layer of some other material, usually a mixture of metals, to conduct ions between the electrodes and create energy.

But it is also developing manufacturing techniques that lend themselves to mass production,the company has been extremely secretive about its technology, so we don’t know exactly what it uses as its electrolyte—which could certainly end up affecting the cost or manufacturability of these batteries on a larger scale.

The Aluminum Air

Even though lithium is the king of battery materials, it has plenty of other drawbacks besides bursting into flames. Not only is it expensive to mine, but it’s less efficient than some other materials at releasing electrons, as Chemistry World recently explained, which makes it slower to charge and discharge.

So, what about batteries that don’t need any lithium at all, some of which could charge your phone in seconds—at least theoretically? 

Aluminum air batteries have been around for a long time. In theory, these batteries could have 40 times the capacity of lithium ion batteries, and Phinergy says they could extend the range of EVs to 1,000 miles.

Still, research is continuing on aluminum air, and there are several companies claiming they’ll bring it to market within the next few years, including Phinergy. A company called Fuji Pigment also claimed recently that it had made a huge leap forward. Fuji says that it’s figured out a way to protect the aluminum with insulating materials, so it would be able to recharge without being swapped.

The Microbattery

Another major issue with conventional batteries is their size. While almost every other part of our electronics get smaller, batteries are still pretty hefty. For example, the newest Apple laptop is defined by its battery size—which, even though it’s designed in a super-efficient tiered structure, still takes up most of the space in the body.

More and more research is focusing on what are called “3D” microbatteries. What’s the difference between 2D and 3D? Well, think of a 2D version as a simple sheet cake: There are two electrodes, separated by an electrolyte. These can get super-thin, but you’re limited to a very thin cake with a pretty low power output.

In comparison, a 3D battery is more like a roll cake (ok, it’s an imperfect metaphor) where you can increase the surface area of the electrodes by tightly interlocking them in microscopic layers. By increasing the surface area, you make it easier for ions to travel from one electrode to the other—which increases the battery’s power density, or the rate at which it charges and discharges.

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