"It is an early prototype of his SlimCell battery and powerful enough to energize a transistor radio. The SlimCell does away with Voltas 200-year-old liquid chemistry by using flexible and extremely thin solid laminates that can be manufactured cheaply, rolled up into a tube or molded right into a handheld device. We have to change the image of a battery. Stop thinking soda cans. Start thinking potato-chip bags, says Sadoway. Solid-state, paper-thin batteries have been an unrealized goal of industry for a decade. Chemists at firms such as 3M struggled to find a solid that conducts ions with the ease of a liquid or gel. In the mid-1990s Sadoway, a Canadian metallurgist who has spent his entire career teaching at MIT, was searching with his students for ways to reduce air pollution in Los Angeles. One idea was electric cars, but a lithium ion battery of the size needed doesnt make any sense, as it would require its own cooling system and woul!
dnt work well in extreme climates. Solid electrolytes, as elusive as they seemed, would be far lighter, safer and more versatile. He pitched the problem to MIT materials scientist Anne Mayes, who suggested a recipe: two polymers, polyoxyethylene and polylauryl methacrylate, woven together like strands of cooked spaghetti and brushed with a highly conductive goop called polyethylene oxide. The result is a dry electrolyte that is about the thickness of cellophane but could ultimately be made as thin as one micron, a thousandth of a millimeter. Prototypes of Sadoways SlimCell can deliver 300 watt-hours per kilogram, twice the energy density of traditional lithium ion batteries."
- Re: Future batteries Frederick Sparber
- Re: Future batteries Michel Jullian
- Re: Future batteries Frederick Sparber
