Yes there are criticisms of electric vehicles, probably the most commonly-heard is that their batteries take far too long to recharge – after all, limited range wouldn’t be such a big deal if the cars could be juiced up while out and about, in just a few minutes. Well, while no one is promising anything, new batteries developed at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign do indeed look like they might be a step very much in the right direction. They are said to offer all the advantages of capacitors and batteries, in one unit.

“This system that we have gives you capacitor-like power with battery-like energy,” said U Illinois‘ Paul Braun, a professor of materials science and engineering. “Most capacitors store very little energy. They can release it very fast, but they can’t hold much. Most batteries store a reasonably large amount of energy, but they can’t provide or receive energy rapidly. This does both.”

The speed at which conventional batteries are able to charge or discharge can be dramatically increased by changing the form of their active material into a thin film, but such films have typically lacked the volume to be able to store a significant amount of energy. In the case of Braun’s batteries, however, that thin film has been formed into a three-dimensional structure, thus increasing its storage capacity.

Batteries equipped with the 3D film have been demonstrated to work normally in electrical devices, while being able to charge and discharge 10 to 100 times faster than their conventional counterparts.

To make the three-dimensional thin film, the researchers coated a surface with nanoscale spheres, which self-assembled into a lattice-like arrangement. The spaces between and around the spheres were then coated with metal, after which the spheres were melted or dissolved away, leaving the metal as a framework of empty pores. Electropolishing was then used to enlarge the pores and open up the framework, after which it was coated with a layer of the active material – both lithium-ion and nickel metal hydride batteries were created.

The system utilizes processes already used on a large scale, so it would reportedly be easy to scale up. It could also be used with any type of battery, not just Li-ion and NiMH.

The implications for electric vehicles are particularly exciting. “If you had the ability to charge rapidly, instead of taking hours to charge the vehicle you could potentially have vehicles that would charge in similar times as needed to refuel a car with gasoline,” Braun said. “If you had five-minute charge capability, you would think of this the same way you do an internal combustion engine. You would just pull up to a charging station and fill up.”

Braun and his team believe that the technology could be used not only for making electric cars more viable, but also for allowing phones or laptops to be able to recharge in seconds or minutes. It could also result in high-power lasers or defibrillators that don’t need to warm up before or between pulses.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

The possibilities are certainly

endless.Perhaps invisible phones.

July 29, 2011 – 11:28AM

Seeing clearly … Stanford’s transparent lithium-ion battery. Photo: LA Times

In the category of people making things you didn’t know you need, researchers at Stanford University have just created a thin, flexible, totally transparent lithium-ion battery. It is about the size and shape of a Listerine breath mint strip, and as clear as Glad Wrap.

According to an article on the university’ website, researchers were inspired to make a see-through battery partially because they want transparent Apple products to be a reality in the future.

“I want to talk to Steve Jobs about this. I want a transparent iPhone!” said Yi Cui, battery expert extraordinaire and an associate professor of materials science at Stanford who worked on the project.

Cui created the battery with graduate student Yuan Yang, who is the first author of the paper “Transparent Lithium-ion Batteries,” published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

The challenge of making a battery see-through is that certain key materials that make a battery work are fundamentally not transparent, and no good transparent substitutes could be found. The Stanford scientists found a way around the hurdle by making the non-transparent parts of the battery so small that they cannot be seen with the naked eye.

Here’s how the Stanford story explains it:

“If something is smaller than 50 microns, your eyes will feel like it is transparent,” said Yang, because the maximum resolving power of the human eye is somewhere between 50 to 100 microns.”

Yang and Cui devised a mesh-like framework for the battery electrodes, with each “line” in the grid being approximately 35 microns wide. Light passes through the transparent gaps between the gridlines; because the individual lines are so thin, the entire meshwork area appears transparent.

The battery is not strong enough to power a laptop yet, but it could power a camera. And Ciu is optimistic that it won’t be long before the battery gets stronger.

If you want to geek out, you can read more about the crazy science that went into this battery here.

- LA Times

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

This might sound dangerous, but nuclear batteries have been safely powering devices such as pace-makers, satellites and underwater systems for years. They have an extremely long life and high energy density compared to batteries using chemicals. However, they are costly and also very large and heavy. Now researchers at the University of Missouri (MU) are developing a nuclear battery that is smaller, lighter and much more efficient.

Jae Kwon, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at MU, who has been working on building a small nuclear battery, admits that people get the wrong idea when they hear the term “nuclear battery” and think of something hazardous. Although nuclear batteries generate electricity from atomic energy like nuclear reactors, they don’t use a chain reaction, instead using the emissions from a radioactive isotope to generate electricity. So there’s no such risk of the battery in a pace-maker suffering a meltdown.

The battery being developed by Kwon and his research team is currently the size and thickness of a penny, and is intended to power various micro/nanoelectromechanical systems (M/NEMS). The team’s innovation is not only in the battery’s size, but also in its semiconductor, which is liquid rather than solid.

“The critical part of using a radioactive battery is that when you harvest the energy, part of the radiation energy can damage the lattice structure of the solid semiconductor,” Kwon said. “By using a liquid semiconductor, we believe we can minimize that problem.”

Kwon has been collaborating with J. David Robertson, chemistry professor and associate director of the MU Research Reactor, and is working to build and test the battery at the facility. In the future, they hope to increase the battery’s power, shrink its size and try various other materials. Kwon said that the battery could be thinner than the thickness of human hair.

Kwon’s research appears in the Journal of Applied Physics Letters and Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry.

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CHARGING YOUR BATTERY IN ONLY MINUTES IS POSSIBLE

A diagram of a lithium-ion battery constructed using Braun’s nanostructured bicontinuous cathode (left), and a scanning electron microscope image of the nanostructure (right)
(Image: Paul Braun, University of Illinois)

Of all the criticisms of electric vehicles, probably the most commonly-heard is that their batteries take too long to recharge – after all, limited range wouldn’t be such a big deal if the cars could be juiced up while out and about, in just a few minutes. Well, while no one is promising anything, new batteries developed at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign do indeed look like they might be a step very much in the right direction. They are said to offer all the advantages of capacitors and batteries, in one unit.

“This system that we have gives you capacitor-like power with battery-like energy,” said U Illinois‘ Paul Braun, a professor of materials science and engineering. “Most capacitors store very little energy. They can release it very fast, but they can’t hold much. Most batteries store a reasonably large amount of energy, but they can’t provide or receive energy rapidly. This does both.”

The speed at which conventional batteries are able to charge or discharge can be dramatically increased by changing the form of their active material into a thin film, but such films have typically lacked the volume to be able to store a significant amount of energy. In the case of Braun’s batteries, however, that thin film has been formed into a three-dimensional structure, thus increasing its storage capacity.

Batteries equipped with the 3D film have been demonstrated to work normally in electrical devices, while being able to charge and discharge 10 to 100 times faster than their conventional counterparts.

To make the three-dimensional thin film, the researchers coated a surface with nanoscale spheres, which self-assembled into a lattice-like arrangement. The spaces between and around the spheres were then coated with metal, after which the spheres were melted or dissolved away, leaving the metal as a framework of empty pores. Electropolishing was then used to enlarge the pores and open up the framework, after which it was coated with a layer of the active material – both lithium-ion and nickel metal hydride batteries were created.

The system utilizes processes already used on a large scale, so it would reportedly be easy to scale up. It could also be used with any type of battery, not just Li-ion and NiMH.

The implications for electric vehicles are particularly exciting. “If you had the ability to charge rapidly, instead of taking hours to charge the vehicle you could potentially have vehicles that would charge in similar times as needed to refuel a car with gasoline,” Braun said. “If you had five-minute charge capability, you would think of this the same way you do an internal combustion engine. You would just pull up to a charging station and fill up.”

Braun and his team believe that the technology could be used not only for making electric cars more viable, but also for allowing phones or laptops to be able to recharge in seconds or minutes. It could also result in high-power lasers or defibrillators that don’t need to warm up before or between pulses.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

of a penny

may allow for complete recharging

within minutes

By Ben Coxworth

15:08 March 21, 2011

A diagram of a lithium-ion battery constructed using Braun’s nanostructured bicontinuous cathode (left), and a scanning electron microscope image of the nanostructure (right)
(Image: Paul Braun, University of Illinois)

Of all the criticisms of electric vehicles, probably the most commonly-heard is that their batteries take too long to recharge – after all, limited range wouldn’t be such a big deal if the cars could be juiced up while out and about, in just a few minutes. Well, while no one is promising anything, new batteries developed at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign do indeed look like they might be a step very much in the right direction. They are said to offer all the advantages of capacitors and batteries, in one unit.

“This system that we have gives you capacitor-like power with battery-like energy,” said U Illinois‘ Paul Braun, a professor of materials science and engineering. “Most capacitors store very little energy. They can release it very fast, but they can’t hold much. Most batteries store a reasonably large amount of energy, but they can’t provide or receive energy rapidly. This does both.”

The speed at which conventional batteries are able to charge or discharge can be dramatically increased by changing the form of their active material into a thin film, but such films have typically lacked the volume to be able to store a significant amount of energy. In the case of Braun’s batteries, however, that thin film has been formed into a three-dimensional structure, thus increasing its storage capacity.

Batteries equipped with the 3D film have been demonstrated to work normally in electrical devices, while being able to charge and discharge 10 to 100 times faster than their conventional counterparts.

To make the three-dimensional thin film, the researchers coated a surface with nanoscale spheres, which self-assembled into a lattice-like arrangement. The spaces between and around the spheres were then coated with metal, after which the spheres were melted or dissolved away, leaving the metal as a framework of empty pores. Electropolishing was then used to enlarge the pores and open up the framework, after which it was coated with a layer of the active material – both lithium-ion and nickel metal hydride batteries were created.

The system utilizes processes already used on a large scale, so it would reportedly be easy to scale up. It could also be used with any type of battery, not just Li-ion and NiMH.

The implications for electric vehicles are particularly exciting. “If you had the ability to charge rapidly, instead of taking hours to charge the vehicle you could potentially have vehicles that would charge in similar times as needed to refuel a car with gasoline,” Braun said. “If you had five-minute charge capability, you would think of this the same way you do an internal combustion engine. You would just pull up to a charging station and fill up.”

Braun and his team believe that the technology could be used not only for making electric cars more viable, but also for allowing phones or laptops to be able to recharge in seconds or minutes. It could also result in high-power lasers or defibrillators that don’t need to warm up before or between pulses.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

Lithium-air batteries are currently in the works, and IBM predicts that batteries “that use the air we breath to react with energy-dense metal” will result in smaller, lighter rechargeable batteries that last ten times longer than today’s lithium-ion types. Whilst such batteries could be used in everything from cars to home appliances, it is also suggested that small items such as cell phones might not need batteries at all. IBM is trying to reduce the amount power required for such devices to less than 0.5 volts per transistor. At those rates, it is claimed, they could be powered via “energy scavenging” – like already-existing kinetic wrist watches that get their power from the user’s arm movements, or experimental piezoelectric devices.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

Definitely one of the crowd favorites at last week’s Future of Electric Vehicles conference was the presentation by Eva Hakkanson and Bill Dube. The highly-entertaining couple, who design and build electric racing motorcycles out of their home garage, have set some impressive records with their KillaCycle drag bike – it currently holds the title of World’s Fastest Electric Motorcycle, and is also the world’s fastest EV of any kind. The bike was on display at the conference, so we asked Eva to give us the nickel tour.

• 
• 
• The KillaCycle has consistently broken its own speed records since 1999. It most recently set the bar last September at Colorado’s Bandimere Speedway, where it traveled a quarter of a mile in 7.864 seconds, reaching a top speed of 169 mph (272 km/h). At that same event, Eva set the record in the 48 V street-legal category, on the ElectroCatEva and Bill are now finishing up the KillaJoule, an 18-foot (6-meter) long fully-enclosed streamliner bike that has already made several test runs at Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats. Their immediate goal is to beat the land speed record for electric motorcycles, which sits at 176 mph (282 km/h), with an ultimate goal for breaking the record for motorcycles of any kind, which resides at a lofty 368 mph (589 km/h). sport bike which she built with her father in Sweden. That vehicle already held a different kind of record, being the first electric motorbike to make it up the road to Colorado’s notorious Pike’s Peak – Eva was the rider on that occasion, too.
• Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha
• 
  

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

Powering Up

the Battery-Free World

The amount of electricity generated by vibration is proportional to the frequency and amplitude of the vibrator, which means that maximizing both will easily increase output. Because of the way vibration-based generators work, however, fine adjustment is needed to ensure they resonate at a particular frequency, and the inherent vibrational frequency must be matched to the application.

A look at the vibration parameters for the announced prototypes reveals just what application each firm is aiming at. Sanyo Electric, for example, plans to having people wear its device and set the frequency to 2Hz ^Note . Murata Manufacturing chose 10Hz to 20Hz, which is a neat fraction of the 50Hz/60Hz frequency of commercial power. Their decision, explains a source at the firm, was that the large number of vibration sources in that range would provide a wide range of applications. Omron, on the other hand, comments that “about 30Hz is common in factories, vehicles and bridges, for example.”

Note Sanyo Electric is now developing a prototype measuring 23mm x 42mm x 6mm, capable of generating 120?W.

Omron is planning to wait until the market scale becomes a little clearer, and ship product in 2011, according to Masashi Doi, manager, core technology centerof the firm. The company has already shifted its development target from boosting generating performance to assuring reliability. Many wireless sensor networks are expected to be “plug and forget,” capable of running for at least five years without needing anything, so reliability assurance is critical.

Troubling Patents

Patents could pose a thorny problem for practical applications, though. Basic patents do exist for energy harvesting, and some people in the industry have warned that care will be needed when launching business in the field. They are held by EnOcean ^{Note 9)}, and already eighteen key patents in energy harvesting have been identified in the firm’s portfolio.

Note 9) EnOcean began research into energy harvesting in 1995, when it was still a research arm of Siemens AG of Germany. It became an independent venture business in 2001, acquiring all related patents from Siemens in return for 19% of its issued stock.

Fig. 10 Patents held by EnOcean

The patents are for “transmitting collected data using power acquired through energy harvesting technology,” which covers a wide range of applications.

Of these, the strongest is said to be international patent WO 98/36395 (Fig. 10), which covers a very wide scope. It has been granted in a number of nations already, including Germany, the US and China. The patent was filed in Japan in 1998, but patent examination was refused and as a result the patent has not been granted. EnOcean refused to accept the judgment, requesting reconsideration in 2008.

A number of manufacturers planning to ship products using energy harvesting technology as early as 2011 are worried about possible patent issues, but EnOcean Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Markus Brehler has said “Our business is shipping products, not arguing about patents.” In any case, though, care will be needed in export sale.

1) Harrop, P. et al., Energy Harvesting and Storage for Electronic Devices 2010-2020, IDTechEx Ltd., July 2010.

2) Innovative Research and Products, Inc., ULTRA-LOW POWER (MICROWATT) ENERGY HARVESTING FOR WIRELESS SWITCHES AND WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKING TYPES, APPLICATIONS, NEW DEVELOPMENTS, INDUSTRY, April 2010.

3) Roundy, S. et al., “A study of low level vibrations as a power source for wireless sensor nodes,” Computer Communications 26, Issue 11, pp. 1131-1144, July 2003.

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