Stanford develops safer lithium-sulfur batteries with four times the charge of lithium-ion cells
By Richard Lai 
posted March 14th 2010 7:29AM
posted March 14th 2010 7:29AM
posted March 14th 2010 7:29AM
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Making a hamster run in a wheel sounds a lot more promising than any other development in the last 10 years...
@SuperNES
Yes, but I say congratulations to them. They have invented an entire new solution that doesn't work.
@Darkroom
People don't usually think about battery life when they buy a phone, mostly the looks and how high megapixel the camera is.
@Blackstar Safety First.
I love Stanford. Seriously, I do.
@Techno1q
they're not MIT ;)
@Prospero
I actually agree, and its pretty obvious to why that is, MIT is an Institute of Technology, so its more focused on technology than Stanford, but ofcourse we also can't deny Stanford's brilliance in technology (as well as any other field).
@Techno1q
Actually, Stanford is just playing catch up, MIT is leading the pack.
http://www.a123systems.com/a123/technology
We really need this, the only thing holding mobile devices back at this moment is the battery, we need to get rid of this bottleneck.
@Jaysont34 you are damn right. there is greater progress in making chips that are consuming less power than in increasing battery capacity. A combination of the two would be perfect.
@Jaysont34 i don't think the bottleneck will be released pretty soon. I said it is released because it is the industry that holding it back. Just see, no matter how big or how small a laptop is, the battery juice just good for 1-2 hours (now 2-3 hours average). No Matter how small or how big a handheld is, the battery juice just good for 1-2 days average for normal using (phone calls n texting). But ASUS with its 9 hours top, UL30VT and UL80VT, amazed and showed me that IT IS the industry that's the one holding the technology back.
@swizeus
But that's because of chip inovation, as stated above, not baterry tech improvements....
Yearly there are posts here about new battery technologies but it never seems to actually be used in any devices.
@MoonWalkerCTE
Whenever you hear of something like this developed in academia, it could be up to a decade before it hits your average consumer.
They have a ways to go to catch up with MIT's releases
I take all the news releases from August Universities of great technological breakthroughs nearly discovered with a boulder of salt. The business model of all such schools is to secure new grants and to increase existing ones. Student tuitions pay only a fraction of the modern college's expenses so securing & procuring grants is vital to every school's future. A well-run school, therefore, can be counted on to announce, several times a year, a terrifying new threat to the world which that school is singularly positioned to save us from or a revolutionary new perpetual motion machine, just over the horizon, that only a bit more research is needed to deliver.
Thankfully, the earth-ending threats have so far been successfully postponed. Unfortunately, the annual technological breakthroughs are never delivered, presumably blamed on inadequate funding.
I'm waiting for hydrogen fuel cell batterys from people like toshiba, just fill er up, and your lappys good for 30+ days. Wouldn't that be nice?
Sent from my li-ion 3g battery sucking phone...
@Standingfast
Where would you get the hydrogen from in an energy-efficient way? No where, because hydrogen is a terrible vehicle for energy storage.
You guys might as well start separate blogs on batteries and another one for solar tech :p It's insane how many improvements are coming down the pipe.
@Jake88 yet no real-world releases :(
Obsolete Requirements
The fact that this battery only does 40-50 recharge cycles is not a big problem; since each charge cycle holds 4x that of a LiPo battery, that equates to the same energy output as a normal battery with 160-200 cycles. Sure, this should be improved a bit, but it would only need a 25% improvement would make it competitive.
@nijerianprince
That may be true, but what if after half those charge cycles the charge capacity of the battery is halved (or worse).. You can see how there could still be alot of work to be done.
The lack of improvement in batteries for mobile technology is guaranteed to be a conspiracy.
Ever watch "Who Killed the Electric Car?"
Yeah...
Hmm, does it smell like farts?
I've heard about so many battery "breakthroughs" that never materialized into a product that I'm wondering if we've just reached the limit of the kinds of technologies we are using. The incremental improvements we've been making have barely kept pace with the increased power requirements of the technology they run.
Sulfur!?! (smack head in self-deprecating amazement)
Stinkin' Sulfur? d'Geez! Why dint I think of that BEFORE?
What's next? Boron?
@MoonWalkerCTE
Rule of thumb, anytime you see new technology using "nanowires" and/or "carbon nanotubes", it won't be commercialized any time soon. You see that picture with yellow balls on the end of those Si NWs? Those are gold nanoparticles (about 30 nm in diameter) that have been cooking at high pressure and high temp (i.e., expensive). Presently, the end result is just a small batch of these nanowires. Of course, that doesn't stop Yi Cui et al. from researching potential applications since someone must have a breakthrough someday (just don't expect it anytime soon)!
Don't let the fact that it's posted on Engadget let you fool you that you'll see this in your laptop/cell phone battery anytime soon. To be fair, neither Engadget nor Yi Cui et. al (although they seem to get a lot of media attention) claim this. It's up to us, Engagdet readers, not to jump to conclusions (or get our hopes up).
@maestrosmae Hence us saying "one step closer to making our dreams come true."
correct me if i'm wrong. definitely. but didnt apple create some new battery technology called lithium polymer battery. the one thats supposed to get 8 hours on a 17" macbook pro, 7 hours on all the other macbooks and 10 hours on the iPad?
isnt this new technology? or just a rehash of current tech? whichever way, it sounds better that whats being discussed here.
@knightGeek and by that i mean, the sucky battery life of current gen mobile devices and no new tech comin out. not that its better that what stanford just created... sorry
@knightGeek
If by invent you mean took credit for, then yes. Also Li-Poly batteries have the same energy density as Li-Ion, with the differences being that they're more expensive to manufacture, but safer in extreme environments. If you short a Li-Poly battery and then puncture it, it probably won't blow your arm off like a Li-Ion battery would.
Anyway the reason macbooks get such great battery life is because they choose energy efficiency over performance wherever possible, and they have huge-ass batteries.