New lithium-ion battery design – 2,000x more powerful, recharges 1,000x faster

For people having trouble interpreting the graph, the legend from the actual paper says:<p>"The energy and power density of our microbattery cells (A–H) at low to high C rates, along with previous microbattery cells having 3D electrodes (MB1 through MB3). The plot also includes the performance range of conventional power technologies and commercial batteries from A123 (high power) and Sony (high energy)."<p>Where C rates stand for charge rates, with 1C being able to charge the full capacity of the battery in 1 hour.<p>The key take away for the new design's performance isn't the one quoted in the title (of the submission or the article), but rather "Compared with conventional supercapacitors, our microbattery delivers 10 × the power of a supercapacitor at comparable energy density, delivers 10 × the energy of a supercapacitor at comparable power density or has 10 × smaller volume than a supercapacitor at comparable performance".<p>Just by glancing at the graph, you can see that the design is orders of magnitudes less energy dense than today's lithium-ion batteries. This advancement will make high-power applications more feasible, but will probably not do very much to increase your phone/laptop's battery life.

This is a classic case of a submission title taking liberties with the meaning of the article it links.<p>This submission's title: "New lithium-ion battery 2000 times more powerful, recharges 1000 times faster"<p>The actual title: "New lithium-ion battery design that’s 2,000 times more powerful, recharges 1,000 times faster"<p>The missing word is "design", a word that is crucial to the meaning of the article. The article discusses <i>a design for a battery</i>, not a battery. How important is that? Here's the last sentence in the linked article:<p>"For this to occur, though, the University of Illinois will first have to prove that their technology scales to larger battery sizes, and that the production process isn’t prohibitively expensive for commercial production."<p>It's a design, not a battery.<p>The solution to this problem, as I have pointed out many times before, is to <i>copy the article's title, do not invent your own</i>.

To be clear, this is the ExtremeTech blog, all of their commentary leans heavily toward wishful thinking.<p>For context a number of surface area improvements in Lithium-Ion anodes have failed at scale due to the creation of lithium dendrites (metal 'wires' that grow during recharge) which have either rendered large sections of the anode worthless and reduced the capacity of the battery, or created rapid exothermic reactions (aka fires) in the battery.

Where's that xkcd chart when I need it for every announcement like this...<p>Ah here we go: <a href="http://xkcd.com/678/" rel="nofollow">http://xkcd.com/678/</a>

To be clear: high power density, but similar energy density to current batteries.

The title is completely misleading.

Uh, let's combine this with the other 3 articles claiming a 10x more long lasting battery, and we'll have a 1000x longer lasting, 2000x more powerful, 1000x faster recharging battery.<p>I really love progress, but I've seen too many of these "N times better" articles and no actual consumption products by now.<p>Same with these memristors, MRAM and feRAM, and 1000x faster internet.

The one thing they did not mention was the battery weight and size. The biggest barrier for electric cars and other battery uses is the ratio of energy to weight and size.<p>Today, this ratio enables about 70-100 miles travel for an electric car with a similar weight and size as a gasoline car.<p>will be interesting to follow this initiative.

If a car battery can be made to charge to 50% capacity in about a minute with a total range greater than 60 miles or so, then a very novel solution to charging electric cars becomes possible -- induction coils at stop lights and along highways.

"2000 times more powerful, recharges 1000 times faster " - so it will still take twice as long to charge it fully then?

It discharges/charges much faster, that is all about the new battery.<p>Discharging fast make it more possible to catch fire.<p>Overall, it seems not very useful for smartphones.

Design != Build != Shipping<p>I love this research but have seen similar articles for the past decade. At scale production is hard, just ask A123.

I wonder if 2,000x more powerful means generates 2,000x more heat and the risk of exploding is increased by 2,000x as well?

The most exciting application they can imagine for a super-battery is smaller cell phone batteries?<p>That doesn't seem very forward thinking.

Great, my Android will be alive 6 hours longer

Oh good, I can play Angry Birds longer.

And it will be available in 10 years.