Lithium-ion

The many cells that make up a lithium battery pack are not all equal; some will degrade and die faster than others. New research out of Stanford has found that the whole battery can live much longer if each cell gets an individual charging treatment.

Scientists at the University of Buffalo experimenting with next-generation battery designs have demonstrated how magnetism might be used to bring a new level of precision to the way we monitor a battery's state of charge.

Ampirus has shipped the first batch of what it calls the most energy-dense lithium batteries available today. These silicon anode cells hold 73 percent more energy than Tesla's Model 3 cells by weight, and take up 37 percent less volume.

This year served up a stellar crop of battery advances that resulted from researchers thinking outside the box, reimagining these devices and the way they function. Let's take a look at the most creative and interesting examples.

Scientists have made a breakthrough that overcomes a technical issue that has held back highly promising lithium-metal battery architecture, which could pave the way for batteries with as much as 10 times the capacity of today's devices.

An MIT team has developed an electrolyte solution that can accommodate high-capacity lithium-metal battery chemistry, paving the way for electric cars and mobile devices that could last far longer on each charge.

Owing to its abundance and low cost, lead is an alternative battery material with plenty of appeal, and scientists have just demonstrated how it can form the basis of a new anode that offers far greater storage capacity than graphite.

QuantumScape has announced stunning performance figures for what may be the first commercially viable solid-state lithium-metal battery. It's claimed to add as much as 80% to the range of an electric car, and charge from 0-80% in just 15 minutes.

We got it wrong, folks. The Superbattery from Skeleton Technologies is not a hybrid battery/ultracapacitor energy system, it's an entire new type of cell that sits somewhere in between the two. And it will make it into EVs – just not how we expected.

French company Nawa technologies says it's already in production on a new electrode material that can radically boost the performance of existing and future battery types, delivering 3x the energy density, 10x the power, and vastly faster charging.

Carefully introducing new materials into the design of today’s lithium-ion batteries has the potential to greatly improve their performance, and scientists have just happened upon a promising possibility in carbon nanotubes.

Despite advances in new battery designs, good old lithium-ion batteries are still the frontrunner. There’s plenty of room for improvement though, and now researchers have identified a new cathode coating that could make them safer and longer lasting.