Energy Storage

Researchers have created a new lithium ion battery made from a porous solid which greatly improves its performance as well as reducing the risks due to overheating.

There are three important technological megatrends for vehicles that are now coming increasingly important. They are shaping what is designed and the market positioning of new vehicles from type of customer targeted to the location where the vehicles will be used.

In the study the new battery technology employs use of graphene on the silicon surface and that confers volume expansion leading to extended battery life.

The industrial and commercial electric vehicle business will be 42% of the EV market in 2025 on IDTechEx analysis with well over 50% of the profits because so much of it is specialist and niche and the vehicles are not bought on up-front price.

Chemical batteries store a lot of energy but require a long period of time for that energy to charge and discharge plus have a limited lifespan. Capacitors charge quickly but cannot store enough charge to work for long enough to be practical.

Scientists have invented a low-cost water splitter that uses a single catalyst to produce both hydrogen and oxygen gas 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

BioSolar, Inc has announced that it has jointly filed a patent application with the University of California, Santa Barbara.

GrafenTek is a very early stage company based in Istanbul, Turkey. GrafenTek is working on silicon-graphene composites for Li ion batteries.

Reinventing how these batteries are made also improves their performance and recyclability.

Here is our report on the first day of the Electric and Hybrid Marine World Expo in Amsterdam 23 June.

Each year IDTechEx Research releases its up-to-date market report on graphene and related materials: Graphene and 2D Materials: Markets, Technologies and Opportunities 2015-2025.

In a new study, researchers explain why one particular cathode material works well at high voltages, while most other cathodes do not.

A new design strategy has emerged for making batteries flexible.

Researchers have discovered the structure and transport properties of the "intermediate state" in lithium-ion batteries - key to understanding the mechanisms of charge and discharge in rechargeable batteries.

EnerG2 is a company founded in 2003 that develops carbon materials at large scale to enable large-scale production of carbon materials that surpass the limitations of the naturally occurring carbons traditionally used in energy storage applications. They have carbon products for Lead Acid batteries and Supercapacitors and recently they have developed a Silicon Carbon Composite for battery anodes.

The power electronics business as applied to electric vehicles is becoming so huge that very divergent approaches become viable.

A123 Systems LLC has announced its plan to double global manufacturing capacity to 1.5 GWh within the next 3 years.

Origami, the Japanese art of paper folding, can be used to create beautiful birds, frogs and other small sculptures. Now a Binghamton University engineer says the technique can be applied to building batteries, too.

IDTechEx interviews in Japan have established that supercapacitors across lithium-ion batteries in cars can increase range by 10% by permitting deep discharge, provided suitable batteries are used that can tolerate such a regime.

Jean-Yves Sánchez researches the development of calcium batteries that can compete with lithium batteries.