Beyond Lithium-Ion – The Future of Battery Technology
This is the final post in a six-part series on lithium batteries:
- What’s Inside a Lithium-Ion battery?
- How is a Lithium-Ion battery different than a Lead-Acid battery?
- Which is a better Lithium-Ion battery, NMC or LFP?
- Aren’t all Battery Management Systems (BMS) the same?
- What is the future of lithium batteries?
- Beyond Lithium Ion – the future of battery technology
It is fitting that the last post in this series on lithium-ion batteries is about what comes after lithium-ion because the technologies in this blog will cause a market conversion comparable to what the compact disc did to the cassette tape. Specifically, the energy storage technology that will replace lithium-ion batteries are solid state batteries.
According to Weiwei and other authors, “Solid-state electrolyte (SSE) can provide potential solutions for many of the problems that have limited the development of liquid Li-ion batteries, such as flammability, limited voltage, unstable solid-electrolyte interphase formation, poor cycling performance and strength.” Imagine being able to charge a car in 5 minutes, the battery lasts 25 million miles and it having a safety profile equivalent of a plastic toy. Read more...
It is for these reason that every major car manufacturer is working on developing solid state battery technology. (Read more) “Honda recently confirmed it's working on them in its Tokyo-based lab, with plans to launch a vehicle with a solid-state battery in the latter part of the by 2028 or 2029. Hyundai, BMW, Ford, GM, Volkswagen, and more are conducting similar research, JD Power reports n a new window). Toyota leads, with over 1,300 patents related to solid state batteries, and it plans to launch a hybrid with one by 2025.” Solid state batteries are being used to provide energy for industrial robots (Read more...), data warehouses and other applications. Even NASA is researching solid state batteries for their energy density, longevity and safety benefits. Read more...
But, what is a solid-state battery and what research is being done to develop and commercialize solid state batteries? In a liquid/gel battery, as we learned about in the first post about what’s inside a lithium battery, a membrane separator keeps the cathodes and anodes separate and creates an electrical gradient across the separator. In a solid state battery, solid materials are used as the electrolyte rather than a membrane. This allows up to 300% greater energy density than using a liquid electrolyte.
However, it’s challenging to find a solid electrolyte that can produce enough ionic conductivity for large batteries like those used in marine vessels and electric cars. Therefore, most solid state battery research focuses on different strategies for achieving fast lithium ion transport in a solid. Different materials such as silicon, sulfur and sodium are being tested. Lithium doping of perovskite crystals could increase ion transport by introducing energy into the band gap (energy difference between the top of the valence band and the bottom of the conduction band) and thus increase conductivity across larger battery cells. Other research focuses on mixing different types of metals to create new pathways – much like the addition of expressways on a congested highway – through which lithium ions can move quickly through the solid electrolyte.
Solid-state batteries won’t all of a sudden become available, but will be a cascading release of different technologies. The first solid-state batteries that will be commercially available and are available today are sodium batteries. These don’t increase energy density, but they do increase safety and longevity. Quantumscape has a deal with Volkswagen that could put its sodium batteries in cars by 2025 and Natron already sells solid state energy storage solutions to data warehouses. Read more...
Beyond the immediate future, it is hard to know what solid state battery technologies will fill the current technological gaps preventing high energy density solid state battery commercialization from taking place. However, with billions being spent annually and with hundreds of companies working on solid state batteries, we at Green Yachts are confident that the future of marine electrification will shift to solid state batteries in 10 to 20 years.
We hope that this six-part series on lithium batteries has been useful. Please submit a comment and let us know what you think, what topics you would like Green Yachts to cover and if you have any questions.
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