I appreciate this! Sometimes articles don't convey 'this is old technology...that researchers are still refining', instead they tend to be sensational. It's nice to know that this was an older research project (2012, not 2015). I'd rather read sober reporting than to be hyped up on the 'next big thing'. Your citation does this, which is why I appreciate it.
> In a press release (PDF), the University of Cambridge scientists admitted that a commercially viable lithium-air battery was still “at least a decade away,” but their research showed that some of the big roadblocks to developing such batteries can be tackled.
In a more serious tone, there are lots of positive changes like this which are inexorably working their way into production. And I agree with you it will be pretty interesting when your phone lasts for a week or more, with heavy use, on a single charge.
> But a commercially viable Li-air battery is still “at least a decade away."
Eh. Why even bother talking about it then? (especially in the context that we've seen tens of these announcements in the past decade).
What all of these "breakthroughs" talk about is that they managed to "double the density for the same cost" or whatever, for only a pin-size battery. Anything scaled beyond that and it starts losing its advantages. That's why we hear about so many battery breakthroughs only to never hear about most of them again. Because when they start getting close to actually making a battery product for the market, they realize it's actually not very competitive at all.
So wake me up when they can make at least a 2,000 mAh smartphone battery that's ready to be commercialized within a year (basically they'd just need to find a customer and start mass production).
No, but we don't walk around through a sea of graphite. I would expect that a properly filtered air intake would be likely, since a chunk of lithium (a solid at room temperatures, and this quite dense) would need vast volumes of air to react with.
How many times in the past few years have we heard about "new battery technology" that was coming soon and would revolutionize the industry? Too many, and none of them ever seem to come to fruition.
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[ 9.1 ms ] story [ 885 ms ] threadAll that research success yet no production samples.
ah, they even linked to the article I read in 2012:
http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/06/lithium-air-battery-a...
https://xkcd.com/678/
In a more serious tone, there are lots of positive changes like this which are inexorably working their way into production. And I agree with you it will be pretty interesting when your phone lasts for a week or more, with heavy use, on a single charge.
Eh. Why even bother talking about it then? (especially in the context that we've seen tens of these announcements in the past decade).
What all of these "breakthroughs" talk about is that they managed to "double the density for the same cost" or whatever, for only a pin-size battery. Anything scaled beyond that and it starts losing its advantages. That's why we hear about so many battery breakthroughs only to never hear about most of them again. Because when they start getting close to actually making a battery product for the market, they realize it's actually not very competitive at all.
So wake me up when they can make at least a 2,000 mAh smartphone battery that's ready to be commercialized within a year (basically they'd just need to find a customer and start mass production).
Until then it's all fairy tales.
What mechanisms usually responsible ?