Nexeon produces world’s highest capacity Lithium-ion battery
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Imperial College spin-out Nexeon has succeeded in producing lithium-ion batteries with the world’s highest capacity for their size. Based on Nexeon’s Silicon anode technology, the cells have a capacity of 3.2Ah. This is higher than that of the best commercially available lithium-ion batteries which offer capacities of between 2.5Ah and 3.1Ah
According to the company - a finalist in this year’s Engineer Technology and Innovation Awards - the breakthrough could lead to longer operating times for consumer electronic products and greater range for electric vehicles.
Produced at Nexeon’s pilot plant in Oxfordshire, the batteries are based on the firm’s Silicon anode technology. As previously reported by The Engineer, Silicon - which allows batteries to hold ten times the charge of cells with Carbon anodes - has long been viewed as one of the keys to improved battery performance. By modifying the physical form of the silicon Nexeon has addressed fundamental problems resulting from the material’s physical instability during charge cycles.
The firm has also developed production methods for its cells that could keep costs equal to those of conventional carbon anodes, and plans to deliver cells with a capacity of 4Ah at some point next year.
Readers' comments (5)
Tom | 17 Dec 2010 1:22 pm
I already own LiPo cells with 4.0Ah capacity, what we really need to know is what their Wh/g is as the cells I own are a puny 0.12 Wh/g for the finished pack including wires and connectors.
If their claims of 10x capacity are true then I would like to see 1 Wh/g and I guess that is the end of ICE!
Tom
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Andy Gizara | 17 Dec 2010 6:10 pm
Thank you Tom, for begging the question regarding gravimetric energy density. I would have liked to seen it put in terms of Wh/kg, to the illustrate the point of your comment "end of ICE"... I suppose we can estimate if the best these days are ~165Wh/kg, then Nexeon is perhaps soon approaching 200Wh/kg production. Delivering on their 10x promise would also truly blow the doors wide open for the intermittent renewable energy market!
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Anonymous | 17 Dec 2010 7:08 pm
Bring it on!
I hope the batteries do have around 10x wh/g than most.
EVs are to me the best opportunity for the UK to regain an automotive industry once again.
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Jaques | 17 Dec 2010 11:55 pm
Some serious improvement would be worth reporting; this just sounds like an appeal for sponsorship.The improvement so far is 0.1 a/h on what is already around ...that's nothing to write home about and neither is 4a/h unless it's the start of something big in a new technology direction which can head for serious capacity, heat dissipation, cycling reliability and load/time linearity which meets the purported a/h capacity and to have seriously efective short circuit comeback. The variations in production and external factors will see that 3.2 a/h diminshed from the purported figures and it is not explained in any terms of heavy load effects ...is it linear?...Is there seriously a 0.1a/h " improvement"? Were test conditions identical? Was the 3.1a/h rounded back and the 3.2 rounded up? For me this report is about a non event...I don't feel any sense of excitement about it al all and the report is so vague as to be meaningless.
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David Cutter | 24 Dec 2010 1:36 pm
When should we classify batteries as explosives?
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