Battery

The 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to three scientists for the invention and development of the lithium-ion battery.

An innovative new battery design makes use of an element we’re producing too much of in carbon dioxide, and boasts an unprecedented ability to recharge 500 times.

Scientists at Purdue University have come up with a new and improved battery design by first fashioning a key material into a net-like structure called a nanochain.

​​Two short years ago, Tesla pieced together the world’s largest battery. The company is continuing its moves in this space with a massive new battery dubbed the Megapack, of which it says enough units can be linked together to take energy storage into the giga-scale realm.​

One of the largest natural sources of renewable energy could be right under our feet – literally – with geothermal energy. Now researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology and Sanoh Industrial have developed a new type of battery cell that can directly convert heat energy into electricity.

A South Australia-based startup says it's built a thermal energy storage device with a lifetime of at least 20 years​ that can store six times more energy than lithium-ion batteries per volume, for 60-80 percent of the price.

Engineers have developed a new type of hybrid cathode for a lithium-sulfur battery that seems to boast better energy density than existing versions of both lithium-ion and lithium-sulfur batteries.

At Mobile World Congress this week, Energizer unveiled the P18K Pop, which is basically more battery than phone. Packing a ridiculous 18,000 mAh capacity, it apparently lasts weeks on a charge – but on the flip side, it brings new meaning to the old phrase “brick phone.”

Inspired by the ocean’s role as a natural carbon sink, researchers at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) and Georgia Tech have developed a new system that absorbs CO2 and produces electricity and useable hydrogen fuel.

How we store that energy is a constant work in progress, and while scientists are making important but incremental advances with inventive new materials, others are out to entirely reinvent what we think of as a battery. Here are five of the most innovative examples from 2018.

A new study shows how fluoride might be put to work in better batteries. Researchers at Caltech, JPL, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and the Honda Research Institute have developed fluoride-based batteries that could potentially last much longer than existing lithium-ion-based devices.

Lithium-ion batteries aren't necessarily the best choice for grid-scale energy storage. Researchers at MIT have outlined a new system they call a “sun in a box,” which stores energy as heat in molten silicon and harvests it by tapping into the bright light it emits.