When Will Next Battery breakthrough Come?

No matter how many generations of smartphone launch, we always face an old problem: Why the battery life is still so limited. No matter how many optimizations are made by the mobile phone manufacturer, the battery working time may only differ in hours. Why the progress of lithium-ion battery pack technology is always so slow, When will the breakthrough comes out and we can use our phone for more than several days instead of just one day?

is it An Impossible Dream?

Even if it is recognized that the smartphone has reached a vertex, we can see a lot of technical and design changes every year, such as the OLED screen, the big screen design and so on, which is the popular topic this year. Of course, no matter how these things change, there is some invariant we seem to have become accustomed to, that is, Li-polymer battery technology. The performance is continuously enhanced, the resolution is increased, the photograph is more and more good-looking, but the life is certainly not a big breakthrough.

Of course we have a way to improve the life of the cell phone, as long as the battery to do a greater job, but this is the most brutal way, after all, the phone is so big. Almost all technical research can be used to hit money and time to solve, battery technology is so important, it is not worth the manufacturers to invest?

What’s the Final Solution?

The solution sounds simple, but it isn’t. Spending a lot of money, hiring the best scientists, and having enough patience is not the key to solving the problem. The problem is that creating a battery with a higher energy density will involve a whole new area of science.

This is not, of course, “then change the material” so simple, because the balance of internal material composition even if a little wrong can cause serious problems. There are so many accidents that remind us how serious the accident will be. Prof Wu said the existing combination of nickel, cobalt, and manganese could change over the next few years. Because nickel is more active, its proportion will increase, thus increasing electricity.

Of course, it’s just that it will take years of testing to ensure stability and safety. It is said that if successful, the endurance can be 10% to 20% of the Ascension. But people waited for so many years, and the Ascension and time did not seem to match. The real breakthrough in battery technology seems to be that people are chasing an impossible dream.

Difficulties

With the scientist’s argument, battery technology can be said to be a “chaotic art”. It is so slow to develop, largely because almost every little change or change, need to go through a lot of experiments and tests to ensure safety and stability. Even if you find a material that can help you increase energy density, you can not guarantee that it really works.

For example, recently it has been found that silica gel appears to be a better material than graphite in the battery now. Its energy density is ten times the graphite, which means that if our phone can now hold a day, silicone battery can let the phone top ten days. The problem is that such a battery becomes a very dangerous explosive.