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Designing a Safer Battery for Smartphones (That Won't Catch Fire) [shortened for readability]
By JOHN MARKOFF DEC. 11, 2016 New York Times
Mike Zimmerman likes to shock his guests by using a hammer to drive a nail through a solid polymer lithium metal battery.
Nothing happens ” and that's a good thing."
Mr. Zimmerman's battery is a new spin on lithium-ion batteries, which are widely used in products from smartphones to cars. Today's lithium-ion batteries, as anyone who has followed Samsungs recent problems with flammable smartphones may know, can be ticking time bombs. The liquids in them can burst into flames if there is a short circuit of some sort. And driving a nail into one of them is definitely not recommended.
With that in mind, Mr. Zimmerman's demonstration commands attention.
His Woburn, Mass., start-up, Ionic Materials, is at the cutting edge of an effort to design safer batteries. The company is working on â solid lithium polymer batteries that greatly reduce their combustible nature.
A solid lithium polymer metal battery when it arrives commercially will also allow electronics designers to be more creative, because they will be able to use a plasticlike material (the polymer) that allows smaller and more flexible packaging and requires fewer complex safety mechanisms.
My dream is to create the holy grail of solid batteries, Mr. Zimmerman said.
After four years of development, he believes he is nearly there and hopes to begin manufacturing within the next two years. Ionic Materials is one of a new wave of academic and commercial research efforts in the United States, Europe and Asia to find safer battery technologies as consumers demand more performance from phones and cars.
In the last year, Seeo and Sakti, rival United States solid polymer battery makers, have been acquired by the German industrial firm Bosch and the British vacuum maker Dyson.
The interest in solid batteries was highlighted in September when the United States Department of Energy's agency for supporting research in next-generation energy technology, announced 16 awards aimed at accelerating development of solid battery technologies, including a $3 million contract to Ionic Materials.
There is growing evidence that after decades of excruciatingly slow development, batteries are on the verge of yielding to a new generation of material science.
This fall, the recall of Samsungs Galaxy Note 7, a high-end smartphone, brought flammable batteries back into the news. Customers around the world reported that the phones were catching fire. Why it was happening is still unclear. A Samsung spokeswoman said that the company had not completed its evaluation of what led to the battery failures.
Many battery specialists say they believe that the failure lies in the South Korean electronics companies desire to create a thinner battery package, leading to the design of an ultrathin separator, a safety feature intended to prevent battery electrodes from contacting each other directly. That could create a short circuit, leading to fire or explosion.
This use of liquid electrolytes is an inherent, potential flaw in lithium-ion batteries. They are based on liquid electrolytes, a material used to ensure the movement of ions, or charged particles, between the electrodes as the batteries are charged and discharged.
For more than a decade, a hunt has been underway for an alternative solid material that would be less volatile. There has been optimism about new solid polymers that might replace liquid electrolytes, but they have not moved to commercialization ” with the exception of a lithium polymer battery now being used by Bolloré, the French electric carmaker. But that technology is aimed at electric car batteries and it does not operate at room temperature ” it requires preheating to roughly 192 degrees €” something that has been true for virtually all of the lithium metal polymer batteries to date.
Room temperature operation is just one of the potential advantages claimed by Ionic Materials. Its new polymer also has the ability to shuttle ions between a battery cathode and electrode as efficiently as is currently achieved by liquid electrolytes, or even more efficiently.
From article (but picture omitted) : " Mike Zimmerman likes to shock his guests by using a hammer to drive a nail through a solid polymer lithium metal battery."
For the sake of Science, same test was performed during evening cocktail hour at 2008 FE Nationals at Lake Minden - nail driven through 10S pack by un-named racer and observer (
) with "somewhat illuminating" results 
:
DSC00815.JPG
By JOHN MARKOFF DEC. 11, 2016 New York Times
Mike Zimmerman likes to shock his guests by using a hammer to drive a nail through a solid polymer lithium metal battery.
Nothing happens ” and that's a good thing."
Mr. Zimmerman's battery is a new spin on lithium-ion batteries, which are widely used in products from smartphones to cars. Today's lithium-ion batteries, as anyone who has followed Samsungs recent problems with flammable smartphones may know, can be ticking time bombs. The liquids in them can burst into flames if there is a short circuit of some sort. And driving a nail into one of them is definitely not recommended.
With that in mind, Mr. Zimmerman's demonstration commands attention.
His Woburn, Mass., start-up, Ionic Materials, is at the cutting edge of an effort to design safer batteries. The company is working on â solid lithium polymer batteries that greatly reduce their combustible nature.
A solid lithium polymer metal battery when it arrives commercially will also allow electronics designers to be more creative, because they will be able to use a plasticlike material (the polymer) that allows smaller and more flexible packaging and requires fewer complex safety mechanisms.
My dream is to create the holy grail of solid batteries, Mr. Zimmerman said.
After four years of development, he believes he is nearly there and hopes to begin manufacturing within the next two years. Ionic Materials is one of a new wave of academic and commercial research efforts in the United States, Europe and Asia to find safer battery technologies as consumers demand more performance from phones and cars.
In the last year, Seeo and Sakti, rival United States solid polymer battery makers, have been acquired by the German industrial firm Bosch and the British vacuum maker Dyson.
The interest in solid batteries was highlighted in September when the United States Department of Energy's agency for supporting research in next-generation energy technology, announced 16 awards aimed at accelerating development of solid battery technologies, including a $3 million contract to Ionic Materials.
There is growing evidence that after decades of excruciatingly slow development, batteries are on the verge of yielding to a new generation of material science.
This fall, the recall of Samsungs Galaxy Note 7, a high-end smartphone, brought flammable batteries back into the news. Customers around the world reported that the phones were catching fire. Why it was happening is still unclear. A Samsung spokeswoman said that the company had not completed its evaluation of what led to the battery failures.
Many battery specialists say they believe that the failure lies in the South Korean electronics companies desire to create a thinner battery package, leading to the design of an ultrathin separator, a safety feature intended to prevent battery electrodes from contacting each other directly. That could create a short circuit, leading to fire or explosion.
This use of liquid electrolytes is an inherent, potential flaw in lithium-ion batteries. They are based on liquid electrolytes, a material used to ensure the movement of ions, or charged particles, between the electrodes as the batteries are charged and discharged.
For more than a decade, a hunt has been underway for an alternative solid material that would be less volatile. There has been optimism about new solid polymers that might replace liquid electrolytes, but they have not moved to commercialization ” with the exception of a lithium polymer battery now being used by Bolloré, the French electric carmaker. But that technology is aimed at electric car batteries and it does not operate at room temperature ” it requires preheating to roughly 192 degrees €” something that has been true for virtually all of the lithium metal polymer batteries to date.
Room temperature operation is just one of the potential advantages claimed by Ionic Materials. Its new polymer also has the ability to shuttle ions between a battery cathode and electrode as efficiently as is currently achieved by liquid electrolytes, or even more efficiently.
From article (but picture omitted) : " Mike Zimmerman likes to shock his guests by using a hammer to drive a nail through a solid polymer lithium metal battery."
For the sake of Science, same test was performed during evening cocktail hour at 2008 FE Nationals at Lake Minden - nail driven through 10S pack by un-named racer and observer (
) with "somewhat illuminating" results :DSC00815.JPG
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