Powering the Future: Solid State Batteries

[Music] hello welcome to neo scribe this is a dragon drone developed by researchers at the University of Tokyo it's made out of a series of modules equipped with fan thrusters allowing it to maneuver amazingly in the air besides being awesome to look at a drone like this could be used for disaster relief navigating through tight and complex spaces like a snake in search for survivors but the dragon drone isn't that useful at the moment as it can only fly for three minutes before its batteries run out of charge even Boston Dynamics pot mini set to be sold commercially has a battery life of 90 minutes that leaves something to be desired there are many technological advancements being developed that have the potential to make the future fantastic but they will remain in the lab if battery technology does not advance right along with them ever since Sony released the first commercial lithium ion battery in 1991 the technology has been great pairing our mobile computers cordless power tools and electric vehicles but we will need even better battery technology in order to power the innovations of the future a future filled with robots electric vetoes and electric vehicles with ranges comparable if not better than their petrol counterparts there are many researchers around the world developing cutting-edge battery technology and the technology I'm most excited about is solid-state battery technology research for solid-state battery technology has exploded recently and there is a global race to develop and commercialize it but before we get into all of that since solid-state batteries are similar to lithium ion batteries who has quickly cover how lithium ion batteries work lithium ion batteries have four main parts first is the positive electrode called a cathode made out of lithium metal oxide second is a negative electrode called an anode made out of graphite third are electrolytes composed of salts solvents and additives serving as the conductive medium for ions to pass through think of Gatorade except Gatorade has water as a solvent and sodium chloride as a salt compared to the Mexi ethane as a solvent and lithium hexafluorophosphate as a salt we will zero in on electrolytes a little deeper in a moment okay back to the battery the fourth main part is the separator which prevents a short-circuit so when a battery is charging lithium ions are released from the cathode passed through the separator to the anode where they are stored until the battery is charged and as the battery is being discharged the lithium ions are released from the anode and flow back to the cathode and during both charged and discharged phases electrons pass through the electrical circuit powering the device or charging the battery but the key part we're going to focus on are the electrolytes the electrolytes in lithium ion batteries are either in liquid form or polymer form which has the consistency of gel but as you might have guessed by now electrolytes and solid-state batteries are solid and this is the technology that many companies are investing large amounts of money to develop there has been a variety of materials research for solid electrolytes such as ceramics lithium sulfide and even glass but the key thing is they're solid solid-state battery technology has the potential to outperform lithium ion battery technology in every way first solid-state batteries will be safer you see liquid electrolytes in lithium ion batteries are flammable and the batteries create a lot of heat and in some extreme cases the batteries can smolder or catch fire like this or like this there are various reasons for these cases one being the effects of dendrites dendrites are whiskers of lithium that grow inside the battery and over time they can cause the battery to lose power faster shorten the battery's lifespan and in rare occasions the dendrites can get so high that they cause the battery to combust so solid-state batteries will be safer because the solid electrolytes are not flammable on top of being safer solid-state batteries will perform better than batteries today now estimates differ from company to company and various universities but researchers believe that solid-state batteries will eventually allow rechargeable batteries to be cheaper to produce than their liquid brethren they claim that the batteries will be smaller and on top of that the energy density will be much greater one claim is up to three times the density than the batteries we use today and this brings us to sect III sakti 3 is a solid-state battery company based out of Michigan and as a subsidiary of the British technology company Dyson they were named among the 50 smartest companies in 2015 by MIT and they are working to develop a solid-state battery meant for the electric vehicle that Dyson is planning to develop Dyson is investing 2 billion pounds or around 2.7 billion dollars in the coming years for the development of 3 different kind of electric vehicles and a good amount of that will go to the funding of sakti threes development of the battery in 2014 Sakthi 3 announced that they produced the solid-state battery with an energy density of 400 watt hours per kilogram to put this in perspective the lithium-ion cells produced by Panasonic used in Tesla vehicles are believed to have an energy density of 230 watt hours per kilogram but before you get excited Sakthi 3 has been secretive about the research and the battery from their announcement was likely small in scale and there are experts in the industry that are skeptical of the company's claims but it's worth pointing out that Dyson has experienced developing battery technology to scale and producing batteries for various cordless machines and robots with its in-house battery lab in the UK so Dyson will be able to help sack t3 with bringing the technology from lab to market Dyson aims to complete the development of their first electric vehicle and bring it to market equipped with solid-state battery tech by 2020 but it won't likely happen until 2023 their first generations of vehicles will likely run on lithium-ion technology and when sack t3 can achieve full-scale batteries Dyson plans to build a 1 billion dollar battery factory to mass-produce them all right now let's pivot to the father of the lithium-ion battery mr. John Goodenough earlier I mentioned that Sony released the first commercial lithium-ion battery in 1991 but they couldn't have done it without the work of good enough I could do a whole video on good enough while working at Oxford in 1980 he and Koichi mizushima demonstrated a 4 volt rechargeable lithium cell using lithium cobalt oxide making lithium-ion batteries commercially possible anyway good enough has been working on solid-state battery technology he's led a team at the University of Texas at Austin and in 2017 he claimed that they developed and demonstrated a solid-state battery that would be cheap to produce and has three times the energy density than batteries used today the team used solid glass electrolytes along with the alkali metal anode alkali metals are found on the s-block or the very left column of the periodic table below hydrogen but the anode was likely either made from lithium sodium or potassium so with glass electrolytes and the alkali metal anode there is increase in energy density in the cathode allowing for a long cycle life further the glass electrolytes have high conductivity at negative 20 degrees Celsius so using a battery like this would work great in frigid temperatures something that lithium ion batteries struggle with a key member of good enough steam is Senior Research Fellow Maria Braga Braga was developing solid glass electrolytes at the University of proto in Portugal before collaborating with Goodenough with their combined efforts good enough and Braga developed a new version of the glass electrolytes that are now patented by the University of Texas while this all sounds fantastic I must again point out that there are leading battery researchers that are both mystified and skeptical of good enough and Braga's claims the skeptics say that good enough claims and estimates appear to defy the laws of thermodynamics keyword appear and the reasoning is that according to the research paper good enough spatter II has pure metallic lithium or sodium on both sides and with this the battery shouldn't be able to produce energy from electrode reactions as a battery normally works so skeptics are puzzled as to where does the energy come from you see the first law of thermodynamic state that energy can be transformed from one form to another but can neither be created nor destroyed good enough has since responded to the skeptics explaining that the electrodes are capable of reactions because the lithium plated on the cathode is thin enough to make it possible his explanation goes into Fermi energy and quantum mechanics that I don't fully understand so I'll just leave it at that so that was concerning the research paper released last year but they recently published a new paper claiming that their new battery has two times the energy density as existing lithium ion batteries and has a lifespan of more than 23,000 charging cycles which is crazy current lithium ion batteries can charge a few thousand times before they start to lose performance if good enough batteries can be produced to scale you could charge your phone or whatever else every night for 63 years this paper too has received skeptism from leading battery researchers but I won't get into it because we must move on all right we've covered the secretive but aggressively funded sect III and Dyson and the promising and spectacular claims of the great mr. good enough now let's move on to the big leagues - an all-star team brought together by the Government of Japan who wants to reclaim their position as the world leader in battery technology and manufacturing you see in the past five years Japan's battery manufacturers global market dropped a 41 percent down from 70 percent in 2013 the all-star team consists of Toyota Nissan and Panasonic under the name of the consortium for lithium-ion battery technology and evaluation center or lib Tech lib Tech aims to develop a solid-state battery that would allow an electric vehicle to have a range of 800 kilometers are around 500 miles by 2030 their short term goal is to develop a solid-state battery capable of providing a range of 550 kilometers or 340 miles by 2025 along with Japan's All Star team just about every other major automotive manufacturers working on developing solid-state battery technology as well BMW is confident they will win the race to develop solid state tech they've recently built the battery Research Center and they also teamed up with solid power a leading developer of solid-state batteries based out of Colorado with their partnership with solid power along with their own research efforts BMW believes they're on the cusp of breakthroughs that will give them an edge Volkswagen has invested 100 million dollars in quantum scape a stanford spinoff who've they've been working with since 2012 on solid-state battery tech they aim to complete development of a solid-state battery by 2025 the list of companies developing this technology goes on and on and includes Samsung Bosch GM Fisker Mercedes and many more with so many companies and resources and brilliant researchers working towards solid-state battery technology around the world it's not a matter of if it will happen but a matter of when [Music] all right that's all I have for now I hope you enjoyed your journey if you did please leave a like and subscribe oh yeah I'm Neil scribe and I'll see you on the next journey [Music] [Music] [Music] hey guys I'm really excited for battery technology to improve this push for solid state technology centers around electric vehicles which is awesome but it's another thought that gives me goosebumps when John Goodenough pioneered the lithium-ion battery in 1980 mobile computing devices like smartphones weren't even on the horizon so battery technology like solace a being developed today will likely power spectacular inventions that haven't even been imagined yet all right my channel hit the one-year mark on July 2nd and this has been such an awesome year I feel I've grown so much as a creator and I plan to continue to grow and harness my skills further and further and I hope you stick around for it and now I'd like to thank Doug who Hulan Danielle Lundberg and andreas ramsley for pledging their support on patreon you guys are so awesome and if you connect with my content and want to support this channel there's a link to my patreon page in the description you can pledge as little as a dollar a month every bit helps thank you all so much and I'll see you next time

Channel: NeoScribe

Views: 708,475

Rating: 4.8805313 out of 5

Keywords: Solid State Batteries, Lithium Ion Batteries, How Batteries Work, Solid State Battery, John Goodenough, John Goodenough Battery, Dyson Solid State Battery, Dyson Car, Sakti3, Sakti3 Battery, Toyota Solid State Battery, Electric Vehicles, BMW Solid State Battery, Battery Energy Density, Goodenough Solid State Battery, Nissan, Honda, Panasonic, Electric Car Range, Business, Battery Industry, Innovation, Education, Chemistry

Id: oPh2879pyw0

Length: 15min 5sec (905 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 04 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/johnmountain]

Yes, please. Li-ion batteries are a necessity right now for EVs, and the #1 priority is still to get them cheap enough so they can power any vehicle from $10,000 and upwards for 200+ mile range. There's no denying that.

But once we get to that point, we really ought to start transitioning to the infinitely safer solid state batteries for EVs.

[u/farticustheelder]

This is at least semi bullshit.

We know that solid-state electrolyte batteries work, and that they can have far superior properties compared with today's product.

BUT! MIT and Stanford have been spinning off 'solid-state electrolyte' startups for the last decade. Not one of about a half dozen of these startups has made a commercially available product.

This is of course indicative of a major problem. So far no one has solved that problem. Rather obviously, solid-state electrolyte batteries are not yet ready for prime time.

The question now becomes 'Can solid-state electrolyte batteries make it to market in time to cash in before graphene based supercapacitors take over by 2030?' No one know the answer to that question. But we do know that the window of opportunity is closing fast.

The meta-question arises as to why this particular tech should be getting all the press that it is currently garnering. Anyone remember reading that Tesla has a five year lead over all other car makers in the lithium-ion battery space? VW and the rest of the legacy car industry fiddled the books (dieselgate) while Tesla was developing that lead, now they can't compete.