Energy Storage

A new electrode design for lithium-ion batteries has been shown to potentially reduce the charging time from hours to minutes by replacing the conventional graphite electrode with a network of tin-oxide nanoparticles.

Chemists and engineers have discovered a fascinating new way to take some of the atmospheric carbon dioxide that's causing the greenhouse effect and use it to make an advanced, high-value material for use in energy storage products.

The second day of this excellent event had a huge number of short presentations in brief slots, a format that worked well.

This two yearly event again had about 400 delegates. Once again it provided a forum for the huge number of European and global EV related organisations with overlapping agendas. Of the hundreds of millions of dollars they spend each year, too much goes on soft topics such as consumer attitudes to car models that will not be with us for long or how cars may form a meaningful part of a smart grid over ten years from now.

In the race to find materials of ever increasing thinness, surface area and conductivity to make better performing battery electrodes, a lump of clay might have just taken the lead.

Researchers have successfully synthesised one-dimensional graphenised carbon nanofibre to demonstrate an efficiency breakthrough in silicon-based solar cells.

Attendance was 40% up at the recent IDTechEx event in Santa Clara California with its 200+ exhibitors and nine parallel conferences. Supercapacitors conference and associated Masterclass had a larger attendance and sturdy debate.

A research group has developed an electrolyte which allows the construction of magnesium - sulfur battery cells.

MIT startup, SolidEnergy has achieved 1337 Wh/L in energy density twice that of Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi and Tesla batteries which the company claim will disrupt more than 20 years of domination of the consumer electronics and electric vehicle industries by traditional Li-ion batteries.

In the race to find materials of ever increasing thinness, surface area and conductivity to make better performing battery electrodes, a lump of clay might have just taken the lead.

The search for the next generation of batteries has led researchers to try new methods and materials that could lead to the development of safer, cheaper, more powerful, and longer-lasting power sources, to be used in almost everything, from vehicles to phones.

Electrovaya Inc. has announced that it plans to acquire the assets of a state-of-the-art manufacturing plant with capacity of about 0.5 Gigawatt hours of lithium ion electrodes and other products.

OneD Material was spun out in 2013, acquiring technology for nanostructured materials and related assets for use in energy storage. OneD Material operates an R&D center in Palo Alto, where a team under the direction of Dr. Yimin Zhu continues the development of advanced materials, including SiNANOde™, a silicon-nanowire-based anode for high-energy density Li-Ion batteries.

The technique that treats biochar electrodes for supercapacitors can also be used in making displays.