This Battery Has Blood In It (Kinda). What if the secret to next-generation batteries is circulating in your blood, and the blueprint for powering AR contact lenses is swimming in the Amazon? Humans have been building batteries for a couple hundred years, but nature has been perfecting energy systems for
When is a battery more than just a battery? That’s not a riddle. A battery is more than a battery when it’s also a wall… or a floor, or even part of your car, or a plane. But what if that same battery could cut a laptop’s
Sodium-ion battery technology isn’t exactly new, but something interesting is happening. CATL, the world’s biggest lithium battery manufacturer, says that up to half the market could switch to sodium. That’s right—the biggest name in lithium batteries is betting against lithium. Looks like lithium might need to
You’ve heard of paper straws and cups, but how about a paper battery? One you can compost when you’re done with it. Two companies are already proving it works, one of them with a battery that runs on sugar. So how did humble paper become a next-generation battery
Lithium-sulfur batteries were once kind of a joke. A chemistry so unstable and unreliable that no one took them seriously. But now? Multiple research teams have recently made strides in transforming sulfur from stinky stone to capable cathode. Some claim they’ve cracked the code — creating prototypes that charge faster
Vanadium redox flow batteries are hitting the bigtime, and I mean big. One of the biggest Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESSs) ever is a vanadium redox flow battery that just came online in China, with an even bigger one to come in Switzerland. And there’s even more on the
Solid-state batteries could address some of the biggest issues facing energy storage and EVs; safety, charge capacity, and longevity. But the biggest problem they face? Cost. You can probably see why my interest was piqued when I heard about a new electrode manufacturing technique that apparently uses less energy, less
I published a video a while back about a solid state battery that’s available to purchase for yourself today, but very quickly, questions sprang up around its solid state bonafides. A few of you pointed me in the direction of a company that did a breakdown of Yoshino’s
Batteries don’t last forever — whether they’re in your phone, EV, or laptop. Extending battery life is a major engineering challenge, but what if there was a battery that could last over 100,000 cycles? A battery that could go an entire lifetime with little to no degradation? Imagine
The US military just approved funding for a new silicon-based battery, charging forward into commercialization. But why the push? NanoGraf’s silicon oxide-graphene (SOG) batteries aren’t just an upgrade to lithium—they’re versatile enough for everything from phones and backup storage to EVs. The DOD recently signed a
We can’t control the weather (yet). But we can control how we store weather-dependent renewable energy. So how do we snatch up our lightning in a bottle? Lithium-ion batteries can only go so far…and our historical large-scale go-to, pumped storage hydropower, only works in certain locations. What if
Nothing lasts forever, and batteries are no exception. So as popular as lithium-ion tech may be for energy storage, it’s not without its weaknesses. Chief amongst them is degradation. You can’t expect lithium-ion to operate at peak performance for very long. But what if we could somehow create