Breakthrough in small batteries!
Yesterday Nature Communications published an article summarizing a new innovation in battery technology that promises much higher power AND energy densities, even for very small batteries. Batteries are usually good at delivering energy (kilowatt-hours) but aren’t as good at delivering power (kilowatts). These new batteries seem to have fixed this problem, with power densities as good as the best supercapacitors with reasonable energy densities as well.
Energy storage devices are typically characterized using a Ragone Plot, which shows power density (in watts per kilogram) on the x-axis, and energy density (in watt-hours per kilogram) on the y-axis. Figure 3 from the article shows how these new batteries stack up.
The new batteries are labeled A through H in the Figure, and they have high power densities (like super capacitors) and energy densities comparable in some cases to those of lead-acid, nickel cadmium, or nickel zinc batteries. The article makes the case that new ways of manufacturing batteries should allow us to overcome the power density limitations in typical batteries.
For real-world applications, of course, the issue will be whether these new batteries can be manufactured at competitive costs, but the article offers the hope that new ways of structuring battery materials can lead to substantial improvements in these devices. For those of us exploring the potential effects of widespread use of ultra-low-power electronics, that’s an exciting development.
