Is there anything better than Lithium Ion cells?

[screw3d]

Lithium Ion cells have been in use for how many years? Why haven't the industry advanced to something better? Is there anything in the works?

 

[aplefka]

If it ain't broke don't fix it?

 

[Anubis]

i think they just keep improving the Lith Ion tech, because teh newer lithions get like 3x the life as the older ones

 

[Gibson486]

you make it seem like this stuff is easy to make and engineer.....

 

[Heisenberg]

I don't think there's anything newer than Lion - at least I haven't heard of anything. I think things will move toward fuel cells in the future and away from batteries as we know them.

 

[Hammer]

fuel cells? only thing on the roadmap as far as i know.

 

[AccruedExpenditure]

Compared to the batteries of the early 90's "lithiON" batteries are fvckin high tech.

 

[dighn]

super capacitors?

 

[ActuaryTm]

Nano-batteries, fuel cells (methanol should be coming soon, or so I read), etc. Would expect the nano- derivative is the future of smaller devices.

 

[Rainsford]

As far as I know, they have Lithium Polymer batteries that offer some advantages over Lithium Ion. But they are pretty new and pretty expensive, but I've been doing some research for my senior design project into battery technology and Lithium Polymer seems pretty sweet.

The problem is one of scale, Lithium Ion is everywhere, so it's hard to switch to a new technology. I think the next BIG leap will be to something other than chemical batteries in any case, Lithium Polymer isn't enough of an improvement, AFAIK, to warrent a big switch in so many areas.

 

[Babbles]

There was an interesting article a few months back in Popular Science about battery technology and how the evolution of batteries has been minimal compared to the evolution of other technologies. Apparantly part of the 'problem' is just pure physics and chemistry. With the knowledge that we have know, we are hindered by the limits of basic chemistry.