A battery of questions about lithium ion

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Still, any improvements will need to align with a renewed focus on battery safety, an issue that has haunted the industry since the series of battery-related laptop fires last year that led to the largest recall in the history of the consumer electronics industry.

The culprit for those problems was a defect in Sony's manufacturing technology that left small pieces of metal inside battery cells. When jostled, the metal pieces could work their way through the thin walls of a cell and let an electrical charge run rampant through the battery.

Think of a battery cell as a tiny can of soda. There's only so much room in that can--which typically measures 8mm in diameter and 65mm long--for an electrical charge, and the lithium ion battery industry has reached a point where it's getting exceedingly difficult to keep cramming an electrical charge into those cells and to ensure the cells fit safely into a battery pack, Lampe-Onnerud said.

"Any time when you are aiming to put energy into a confined space, you should understand how that should be deployed," she said.

Incidents with lithium ion batteries are extremely rare, Keaths noted, but they have a way of resonating with the public.

Sony profusely apologized for last year's problems, and it paid a hefty price for the massive recall.

Legacy of the recall
The legacy of last year's incidents have been a variety of new standards and regulations, Huret said.

For example, the Japan Electronics & Information Technology Industries Association and the Battery Association of Japan recently released new standards that call for a maximum charging voltage for the current generation of lithium ion batteries, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and the Department of Transportation are working on similar guidelines, Huret said.

Aside from last year's problems, battery cell manufacturers have been able to make some innovative changes to keep boosting the performance of their products. Still, it's only been good enough to improve performance by 7 percent or so each year.

That's hard to stomach for an industry that has grown up with Moore's Law. Making the cell walls thinner and thinner has been one of the primary ways to improve performance of lithium ion batteries. But it's hard to imagine those walls growing much thinner after Sony's experience last year.

Unless the PC industry decides to place its bets on another charging technology for future notebooks, battery life may be stuck in neutral as the industry focuses more on safety and reliability.

Eight-hour battery life does exist today, for some notebooks, but that requires extended batteries, expensive energy-saving chips, or both. Eight hours won't be a realistic vision for mainstream notebooks until later in the decade, noted Kamal Shah, manager of Intel's mobility-enabling initiative.

Emerging technologies like flash-memory drives and energy-saving displays will continue to help make a difference, he said. "A lot of things will come together by the end of the decade with an incremental improvement in battery technologies," Shah said.

[stamutt]

No mention of Altair Nano's Battery

Altairnano (ALTI) has a battery that is superior to what is out ther now. It is currently being used in Pheonix Motorcars SUT and SUV.

[jimafrost]

Next revolution probably won't be batteries

I'm dubious as to the likelihood of a significantly improved battery any time soon, although fuel cells might work out at least for certain kinds of user.

What is likely to dramatically change the runtime of portable electronics in the near future is e-ink. Reflective displays that need charge only to change state should change everything; they're many times more efficient than LCD technology.

There are many practical problems with the technology today (Sony's ebook, for instance, takes ~1sec to change pages and flashes when it does so) but it's evolving fast and I would be surprised if the next few years don't see the technology become practical at least in certain applications.

Even if that doesn't happen it's likely we'll see other more-efficient display technologies make their way to laptops sooner rather than later, like alternative backlights or OLED.

[GGGlen]

Huh?

Lithium Ion?
Apple shifted to Lithium Polymer long ago. Guess 'cos Dell didn't
do it, it doesn't count :-P

[No_Man]

Not a significant difference

The only differences between Lithium Polymer and Lithium Ion are that Lithium Polymer is lighter and can be manufactured in unusual shapes (i.e. not the typical rectangular blocks). In terms of capacity, they are virtually identical, which means it would be irrelevant to mention it in this article.

[richande]

Lithium Ion in the RC airplane

The RC folks have been struggling with Lithium Ion batteries for 2 years now, the problems arise when charging the batteries. Several garages burned down while charging these batteries! many planes have burned, no improvement in site. there are comercial charging "Vaults", fire proof cans to charge the batteries, even so you NEVER leave the batteries charging, & go eat dinner.
Richande

[ethana2]

Here was my idea for a laptop

www.ethana4.blogspot.com

Main points: use the back of the screen for either heat dissipation or solar panels. Or, hey, half and half, maybe? And for goodness sake, give hard drives more optimal voltages. One high one for the motor, one low one for 130 or 90 nm electronics.

[regulator1956]

RC Fires ??

"" The RC folks have been struggling with Lithium Ion batteries for 2 years now, the problems arise when charging the batteries. Several garages burned down while charging these batteries! many planes have burned, no improvement in site. there are comercial charging "Vaults", fire proof cans to charge the batteries, even so you NEVER leave the batteries charging, & go eat dinner.""

Where are they getting these batteries from? Are they trying to quick-charge a battery that isn't suppose to be quick charged?

Why would the RC guys have fires with the exact same technology that is used by notebooks that have had only the Sony issue?

[skrubol]

Maybe a missing piece of technology?

In pretty much every commercially available consumer electronics Li-ion battery pack there is protection circuitry to keep the pack from being overcharged, charged too fast or drained too fast (most also have protection from being overdrained, but that isn't a safety issue.)
Maybe some RC packs (especially if they're homebrew) don't have this circuitry. Most of the stories of exploding cell phone batteries have been due to generic batteries where this protection is either missing or ineffective.

[amarctaylor]

RC Fires Clarified

The problems occuring with rc batteries are due to physical damage to Li-Po batteries and not the standard Lithium batteries used in 99% of electronic devices and laptops. When Li-Po batteries have been dropped or exposed to too much heat they are very likely to catch fire whether or not they have an electronic overcharging circuit.