Business and Technology Insight Forums Tokyo 2015

Half-day Insight Forum 6

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Dr. Peter Harrop
IDTechEx

Energy Storage: Batteries, Supercapacitors, Lithium-ion Capacitors

This session is concerned with energy stored electrically, with particular emphasis on:  

»lithium-ion batteries
»new "post lithium-ion" batteries that may follow
»lithium-ion capacitors
»supercapacitors

There is a close look at the technologies, how they may improve over the coming ten years and what that makes possible in market growth. Will silicon anodes replace graphite and even the later titanium dioxide ones? Which cathodes are winning and what comes next? What are the costs of the battery parts and where is that going?

We examine uses and new options for serving them such as low power transparent, flexible, woven or even stretchable versions as needed for the new wearable electronics. Electric vehicles will become the largest market for lithium-ion batteries so IDTechEx looks at market penetration of over 45 categories of hybrid and pure electric vehicle by land, water and air. This is a level of detail only IDTechEx can provide. We look at how battery cost is becoming a smaller percentage of electric vehicle cost but still dominant and we forecast the improvement in parameters expected to 2025. We show which parameters are important in which applications. For example, safety and weight are crucial in the new electric aircraft.

The situation with supercapacitors is complex. As with lithium-ion batteries it is not good enough to create a better electrode: it must be matched to a better electrolyte and there is a trend to ionic, non-toxic organic or aqueous electrolytes. We compare exohedral active electrode materials such as graphene with the traditional hierarchical ones with progressively smaller pores into the solid. Parameters are compared. We then look at what will be achieved with energy density and other parameters in the next ten years and what share of the lithium-ion battery market will be impacted. Lithium-ion capacitor hybrid devices now achieve one million cycles of life and energy density up to 80 Wh/kg experimentally. How does pseudocapacitance help these figures? Supercapacitors have taken some market share from lithium-ion batteries despite one hundredth of the energy density. That gap will reduce and it may increase market share disproportionately due to their superior safety, life, reliability and so on.

That is not the whole story because another alternative to lithium-ion batteries is the "post-lithium-ion" battery notably lithium-metal rechargeable in its various forms or rechargeable batteries based on other metals. We examine this work and its potential.

The trends in the functional materials employed are examined closely to look for potential for companies making formulations and intermediate materials. For example, there is the trend from liquid electrolytes to gel then solid ones. There is the trend to replace toxic electrolytes such as acetonitrile and potentially expensive materials such as cobalt. We also look briefly at the new high-speed low-weight flywheels which have supercapacitor-like energy capture and release (power density) and may charge supercapacitors or batteries.

Finally, we report extensive work on structural electronics where the body of say a car will be a load-bearing supercapacitor or battery, potentially with 15% greater range and greater reliability and space as a result.

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