In the 1970s, a small group of researchers – most notable of whom being John Goodenough – surpassed a technological barrier that today stands at the heart of modern technology and modern energy storage.
They developed the first rechargeable Lithium-Ion battery.
Without this series of discoveries and inventions, mobiles, laptops, cordless electric tools, and electric vehicles simply wouldn’t exist.
In the 50 years since this momentous research however, LION batteries have failed to keep up with the increasing demands of modern technology. In just a few thousand charge/discharge cycles, they are rendered unusable. Their relatively low energy density requires frequent or even daily recharging. And dendrites that form within the liquid/poly electrolytes often cut their overall lifetimes even shorter, short circuiting themselves in sometimes explosive flair.
John Goodenough’s remarkable contribution to the world carried these flaws into the 21st century, and few are more conscious of them than Goodenough himself. He continued and continues his research to overcome these drawbacks.
And he’s in good company. Every leading battery manufacturer and consumer is developing in the same direction: solid state batteries.
What’s The Difference?
Liquid batteries like LION are so called because their electrolyte (the medium for electrons to pass from the Cathode to Anode and vice versa) is liquid. Fundamentally, the only physical distinction between these and solid state batteries is that the latter’s electrolyte is solid.
This simple premise brings with it a bounty of benefits, but a series of significant hurdles in order to earn them.
Goodenough draws 3 main principles of distinction:
- Cycle Lifetime
In two senses. Firstly, LION energy density (how much charge it can hold compared to its weight) has become a growing problem as other technology outpaces them. You can see this in action when you have to charge your phone every evening.
Secondly, as with all chemical cells, there is a limited number of times the cell can be recharged before becoming essentially unusable. You can see this when in just a couple of years, you find yourself having to charge your phone regularly – or, ultimately, not being able to charge it at all. At most, LION batteries offer a few thousand charge/discharge cycles before their time is over.
- Short Circuits
If you’ve ever grown salt/borax crystals, or understand how stalagmites and stalactites form (the big spikes you can see in caves), the same principle applies here. Overtime, dendrites form and grow on the electrodes within a cell. When these dendrites finally reach the separator (which separates the anode’s liquid from the cathode’s liquid), the electrolyte is bypassed completely. In other words – a short circuit. At best, these makes the cell defunct. At worst…
- Oh yeah, and they sometimes just explode
As a medium for capacitance, the various liquids used today are highly effective. Unfortunately, these same liquids are also highly reactive – which means once a cell is breached and its contents are exposed to the air, you can expect a very warm song and dance as its final act.
Solid state batteries will improve and even outright resolve these aspects.
What Will Solid State Batteries Provide?
Sakti3, a partner of Dyson, developed an SSB with an energy density of 400wh/kg, nearly twice as much as the most advanced LION cell at 230wh/kg. Research has shown that this could easily rise to above 3 times within the next 10 years. Units in laboratory production are also calculated to get over 10 times the number of charge/recharge cycles before reaching a failure condition. With current mobile phone tech and usage, a comparable solid state battery could last upwards of 60 years.
Dendrites are also theorised to be physically not possible within solid electrolytes, so short circuiting is practically impossible without deliberate or otherwise extreme tampering.
And ultimately, they’re far safer. At least with the most prominent SSB developers, the materials used are non-reactive in stable conditions. In other words, they won’t catch fire and blow up. The value of this aspect is obvious, particularly for applications that require large quantities of cells in one location, like electric vehicles or national grid power storage.
A final, additional bonus to SSBs is their tolerance for extreme conditions. They operate equally well within the moderately extreme ends of Earth’s climate, from sub zero to heatwave.
If They’re So Great, Where Are They?
You’ll notice by their total lack of existence in any commercial or industrial application that solid state batteries are not yet on the market. It took LION batteries decades before they were widely adopted by manufacturers and fully dispersed throughout the global culture. Solid State Batteries have their origins even further back than LION, but this modern iteration of them only began to properly surface in early 2010. In fact, John Goodenough and Maria Braga only began their Glass Battery research 3 years ago, in September 2016, and published just 3 months later.
So we could start with the guess that SSBs should fully replace LIONs by the year 2060, if not much sooner thanks to the wealth of research that the new technology is already built on and the much higher demand for them that already exists.
Solid State Battery technology is still broadly in peer-review, meaning the basic research is already concluded. It’s just a case of going back through the findings to make sure they’re consistent with physical results. However, while a lot of this research is being conducted in universities, most of it is taking place in private sector research and development. So SSBs are very close to commercial availability. When almost all of the big businesses in a sector are funding research into the same technology, it’s not the same slow and steady game of science: it’s a race.
The production and materials have some interesting challenges that will take far longer than the technology itself. Most notably the high costs that are currently understood to be fairly immune to economies of scale: making more will result in each cell being relatively cheaper, but not to the same degree as LIONs currently are. This is no doubt a relatively minor point that will be ironed out over time.
Who Are Developing it?
Who aren’t?
Dyson, as previously mentioned, teamed up with Sakti3 to develop SSB tech for their own products. With remarkable (and perhaps flimsy) ambition, they announced that an electric car built around SSBs will reach production by 2024.
BMW similarly partnered with Solid Power with a target of 2026 for their electric vehicle unveiling. For Volkswagen and Quantum Scape, it’s a similar story, with a target of 2025.
Japan is the forerunner in battery manufacturing and technology – Panasonic in particular being the largest producer of LION cells in the world, and various car and phone manufacturers (like Toyota and Samsung) investing heavily. Millions of dollars are going towards collective research efforts into SSBs, and the government itself is adding to the pile with its own regular funding.
Solid State Batteries rate higher than other comparable storages in every single metric. It’s not a question of if they’ll come to market. It’s a matter of when they will replace current batteries almost entirely.
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