A new breed of flexible, high-energy lithium batteries is changing the shape of next-generation products.
Portable electronic devices, ranging from notebook computers to handheld medical instruments to power tools, are benefiting from steady advancements in energy density, as well as from the rise of thin-format laminate cells. For design engineers, the bottom line is that compact products with longer charge times are more achievable than ever.
"The battery industry is really booming right now," Robin Tichy, marketing manager for Micro Power Electronics, a technology integrator that specializes in the creation of custom battery packs, said in an interview with Design News. "There's a ton of research going on. If you have thin electronic applications, then lithium polymer is getting more interesting. But right now, there are a million different directions you could go in."
Indeed, makers of consumer products are doing just that. Apple Inc. has notably used laminate-style lithium polymer batteries to great advantage in the iPod and iPad, as well as in the paper-thin MacBook Air.
Apple's MacBook Air uses lithium polymer batteries to achieve its 0.67-inch thickness. Source: Apple Inc.
General Motors and Nissan are employing similar laminate-style technologies in the Volt and Leaf, while Tesla Motors is using 6,800 cylindrical lithium-ion batteries in its highly publicized Roadster. At the same time, lithium is finding a big niche in the medical industry, where cart-based instruments are giving way to handheld monitors.
One of the keys to the recent rise of lithium-ion cells is the ongoing increase in capacity. Not long ago, 2.2Amp-hour cobalt-based lithium batteries were all the rage, but in the past five years, they were replaced by lithium cells that used nickel-manganese, and then nickel-aluminum. During this march of progress, battery capacities rose to 2.6A-hr. and then 2.9A-hr.
In June, Panasonic rolled out the NCR18650A, a lithium-ion cell that again stretches battery capacity, this time to 3.1A-hr. Later this year, a few battery makers plan to move to 3.4A-hr. And 4.0A-hr. batteries in the well known 18650 form factor (cylindrical batteries slightly larger than an AA) could be out as soon as 2013, they say.
Panasonic's NCR18650A lithium-ion batteries have a capacity of 3.1A-hr. Source: Panasonic
"We've tripled the energy in the same size can from 1996 to today," Dennis Malec, senior applications engineer for Panasonic, told us. "And the next-generation 4.0A-hr. battery isn't very far off."
Cylindrical cells push the envelope Engineers say the higher-energy breed of batteries is opening new applications in countless industries, but particularly in medical. There, customers are incorporating them in portable ultrasound, portable oxygen concentrators, and portable workstations for monitoring patients. At the same time, a more traditional set of customers is still using lithium-ion as a replacement for nickel-metal hydride batteries in notebook computers, cellphones, digital cameras, and even power tools.
"It doesn't so much open up new applications as it allows the old applications to run longer," Malec says. "Take notebook computers: It allows the manufacturers to offer a broad range of options. For the low-end customer who mainly uses the notebook on a docking station, there's a cost-effective 2.2A-hr. cell. Or they can switch to a 3.1A-hr. battery and push the computing time into the six-to-eight-hour window."
For those reasons, lithium-ion has virtually taken over the mobile computing space. Since 1996, when nickel-metal hydride and lithium-ion were virtually neck and neck, a gap has slowly formed. Today, lithium-ion's energy density far surpasses that of nickel metal hydride.
"In cellphones and notebooks, lithium-ion batteries are almost the only ones being used now," Yevgen Barsukov, IP development manager for battery management systems at Texas Instruments, tells Design News. "Pretty much everything else has been eliminated at this point."
You raised the big battery elephant in the room question at the end, Chuck, about capacity. Will capacities rise to 4.2A-hr or 4.4A-hr? This of course relates directly to product weight. If capacities don't rise, eventually (soon, actually) portable devices relying on these things will hit a design wall, and the heavier devices will end up being performance-impaired.
Is there some kind of Moore's law governing capacity in batteries as there is in processor design? Perhaps a technology that's the equivalent of multi-core for batteries? It would seem there would have to be as devices get smaller malland ser and as as people become ever more reliant on them on a 24/7 cycle. I don't see that demand dissipating any time soon.
What are the safety issues with the laminate-style lithium polymer batteries? It seemed that there was a lot of buzz a couple years ago about potential fires or even small explosions with lithium batteries, but I don't hear much about it anymore. Are these issues addressed in the polymer technology, laminate constructions or just in more robust housings? (Or not at all.)
The problem before was in cotnrolling the batteries themal characteristics. Sometimes if the battery was being discharged too rapidly the temperature rose and created the issues already noted. Smae thing can happen when charging the batteries. I think the solution was in the modification of the chemistry involved.
In terms of energy storage the total energy stored is getting interesting. And any uncontrolled release of that energy has to be dealt with in a safe manner. consider a stick of dynamite. I am not sure exactly how much energy it stores but when it is released suddenly it has dramatic effects. If that same energy could be controlled and released gradually in the form of electric current it would make a fine storage device but probably not rechargeable.
If one had a Lithium-Ion type battery with the same energy storage potential as a comparable size stick of dynamite it would certainly warrant very careful attention to catastrophic failure modes.
As I recall from chemistry class, the most energetic chemical reaction is the conversion of H to H2. That is Monatomic Hydrogen binding with another free Hydrogen into diatomic Hydrogen, H2. I believe it also liberates an electron. Probably not possible to make a battery out of it.
Fuel cells are the devices that transform hidrogen in electrical energy and water! I see a lot taking place here in germany to have very small devices of this kind
The increased energy capacity combined with the lighter weight and the high discharge rates of Lithium Ion batteries has completely transformed certain areas of model airplane flying. Using battery power instead of gasoline or other liquid fuels has been played with for a long time but the emergency of the Lithium Ion in a soft, flexible (and lower weight) has completely transformed the hobby. Many fliers of Radio Controlled (R/C) planes have completely switched over to electric power (I know that I have) for planes ranging from very, very small (sub-ounce weights) to very large aircraft.
Electric propulsion systems have also expanded into control line planes (U/C - planes which fly with lines attached) and free flight (just fire them up and launch them into the air!). Absolutely amazing and quite liberating - no starters, no fuel cans, pumps, batteries for glow plugs, etc. Wonderful.
Of course there has been a bit of learning curve for the hobby. We needed new safety procedures (there is a lot of energy in a charged battery and they have been known to break into flame), new ways (using electronic speed controllers) to control motor speed, new brushless motors for high speed and high output applications, special battery chargers (seems like every battery chemistry has it's own special requirements for charging and maintenance) and the like.
Forgot the company, but one company boasted their construction method for the flat polymer battery that made it safer when punctured (and layers shorted) with metal spike! Who is that company?
That wasn't a lithium-polymer battery! It was an SLA (sealed lead-acid) one, and it was made by Gates (as I recall) quite a few years ago. They were the first to use a "super-gelled" electrolyte to make an extremely leak-proof cell structure. I saw a demo (of a nail being driven through one of their batteries which continued to deliver full power to a load!) at Comdex in Atlanta back in the 1980's. Very impressive!
Ahhh, I remember the company now. They joined with Dow to form Dow Kokam Battery. Kokam has a patented construction method that keeps the battery "safe". I recall seeing a demo video. Check out http://www.dowkokam.com/tech-cells.htm
The advances in processors have all been in production technique, not in fundamental breakthroughs. There is a big difference there. Probably production advances will improve reliability and possibly reduce cost, but breakthroughs are different.
And PLEASE don't get anything started where folks just assume that improvements will just continue to happen. That would be a pain to deal with.
Moore's Law IS just assuming that improvements will continue to happen.
Each company in Integrated Circuit design and manufacturing assumes that Moore's Law will continue, so they have been driven to compete by setting their goals for that level of improvement that Moore's Law predicts and then doing whatever it takes to get there.
There have been many obstacles since 1965 when Moore wrote that prediction that became Moore's Law, but the industry plowed through those obstacles. While the geometric shrinking has been the main method of achieving increased density, that is becoming too costly, so vertically sandwitching multiple layers of transistors is being attempted. There are already manufacturers tooling up for that. When that happens, density will double - and then more verticle layers will be added - and so on.
I think that I need to clarify a bit about the Moore's law about semiconductors and integrated circuits. Most of those advances that allowed for more transistors and tighter packaging were developments in the same manufacturing process, and all of them represented advances in the MANUFACTURING PROCESS. They were not the result of new discoveries or fundamentally new technologies, they have been process improvements.
The next change in betteries will need to be a fundamentally different technology, not just a process improvement. Process improvements will indeed bring us smaller and cheaper batteries, but not the large increase in capacity, (energy density) that we need in order to make electric cars a competitive reality. Some new chemistry or with elements that have a greater energy storage capacity, possibly lithium-flourine, may be a choice, except for the obvious tendancy toward explosion.
The worst thing would indeed be for those who don't have a clue as to what Moore's Law is really about to decide the future based on an assumption that the advances will come no matter what, and that we can be certain that the advances will be made "in time". That would be the setup for a serious dissapointment indeed.
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