Battery technology already makes electric cars possible, as well as helping us to store emergency power, fly satellites, and use portable electronic devices. But tomorrow, could you be boarding a battery-powered airplane, or living in a city powered at night by solar energy? The Battery Series is a five-part infographic series that explores how batteries work, the players in the market, the materials needed to build batteries, and how future battery developments may affect the world.
This is Part 1 , which looks at the basics of batteries and the history of battery technology. Batteries convert stored chemical energy directly into electrical energy. Batteries have three main components:. Electrolyte: The medium that provides the ion transport mechanism between the cathode and anode of a cell. It can be liquid or solid. At the most basic level, batteries are very simple. In fact, a primitive battery can even be made with a copper penny, galvanized nail zinc , and a lemon or potato.
While creating a simple battery is quite easy, the challenge is that making a good battery is very difficult. Italian physicist Alessandro Volta, in , created the first electrical battery that could provide continuous electrical current to a circuit.
The voltaic pile used zinc and copper for electrodes with brine-soaked paper for an electrolyte. His invention disproved the common theory that electricity could only be created by living beings. The Daniell cell, invented in , used a copper pot filled with copper sulfate solution, which was further immersed in an earthenware container filled with sulfuric acid and a zinc electrode. Lead-acid batteries excel in two areas: they are very low cost, and they also can supply high surge currents.
NiCd batteries were invented in by Waldemar Jungner in Sweden. Popularized by brands like Duracell and Energizer, alkaline batteries are used in regular household devices from remote controls to flashlights. They are inexpensive and typically non-rechargeable, though they can be made rechargeable by using a specially designed cell. The modern alkaline battery was invented by Canadian engineer Lewis Urry in the s.
Using zinc and manganese oxide in the electrodes, the battery type gets its name from the alkaline electrolyte used: potassium hydroxide. Similar to the rechargeable NiCd battery, the NiMH formulation uses a hydrogen-absorbing alloy instead of toxic cadmium. This makes it more environmentally safe — and it also helps to increase the energy density.
NiMH batteries are used in power tools, digital cameras, and some other electronic devices. They also were used in early hybrid vehicles such as the Toyota Prius. The first commercially available cells were in Lithium-ion batteries have high energy density and have a number of specific cathode formulations for different applications.
Graphite is a common material for use in the anode, and the electrolyte is most often a type of lithium salt suspended in an organic solvent.
However, here are two of the most important factors that determine the fit and use of rechargeable batteries specifically:. Think of specific energy as in the amount of water in a tank. No one did. Since a lithium-ion battery was relatively light for the amount of charge it held, it also re-opened the possibility of building economic electric vehicles.
Charlatans and hucksters thrive in eras of invention, since no one can truly know what will become the next bonanza. Batteries have been unusually marked by exaggeration and outright fraud: Because people intuitively understand the importance of a better battery and think that therefore the world should have one, they are vulnerable to deception. In , Thomas Edison, misled too many times in the midst of creating his electronic empire, sized up rechargeable batteries as a mere fable.
He wrote:. The storage battery is, in my opinion, a catchpenny, a sensation, a mechanism for swindling the public by stock companies. The storage battery is one of those peculiar things which appeals to the imagination, and no more perfect thing could be desired by stock swindlers than that very selfsame thing. Goodenough himself recalls the story of a Japanese materials scientist by the name of Shigeto Okada.
Okada arrived in at the University of Texas, where Goodenough had moved the previous year from Oxford. After the usual stipulations regarding confidentiality, Goodenough agreed. He put Okada to work next to an Indian postdoc named Akshaya Padhi. In hosting such researchers, Goodenough was part of the peculiar world of materials scientists, who at their best combine the intuition of physics with the meticulousness of chemistry and pragmatism of engineering. It is their role to dream up a new order from the existing parts in front of them.
Padhi and Okada began to tinker, searching for a battery with more energy and better safety than what had already been invented. They thought that a cathode with a crystal structure called spinel might work. In a regular cobalt cathode the atoms are stacked in layers, so the lithium ions stored in it can only travel in and out along these sheets.
In a spinel, the way the atoms are arranged allows the ions to travel in three dimensions, so they can find multiple pathways in and out of the electrode, allowing it to charge up and discharge faster. Perhaps Padhi and Okada could produce an even better spinel. They tried cobalt, manganese and vanadium, but none was quite right. Ultimately, they winnowed down the list to a final option—a combination of iron and phosphorus.
Goodenough was skeptical that they would end up with a spinel, and told Padhi so. Then the old man left for summer vacation. Goodenough arrived back to news. Padhi said the professor was right—he did not achieve the spinel structure. Instead, he had produced a different, naturally occurring crystal structure called olivine.
And he had managed to extract lithium from the olivine, and intercalate it back in. On inspection, Goodenough saw that the result was sensational. Goodenough caught wind of the subterfuge only the following year. He was incredulous. A race of priority was joined. The Japanese and the Americans rushed out competing papers and patent applications. Then the complications worsened. Asserting that his improvements had created yet another new material, Chiang and some partners launched A, a Massachusetts-based battery company.
His stated aim was to sell a version of the lithium-iron-phosphate battery for use in power tools and eventually motor vehicles. In , A sold shares in an initial public offering. Except, again, Goodenough.
NTT admitted no wrongdoing. Goodenough received nothing from A One might see a certain poetic justice in what has happened since. In —just three years after the IPO—A ended up in bankruptcy. BYD has yet to make good on its stated potential. But Goodenough still regarded the outcome of the iron-phosphate dispute as a travesty. The battery world is full of exaggerators and one needs to stand up to them. His brother, Ward, died about the same time at the age of When you are a great inventor in your 90s, there are lots of accolades.
Goodenough Award for materials chemistry. But Goodenough seems most passionate about ending his career with a last, big invention. He is trying, of course, to make a super-battery, one that will make electric cars truly competitive with combustion, and also economically store wind and solar power.
But the path he has chosen involves one of the toughest problems in battery science, which is how to make an anode out of pure lithium or sodium metal. That would instantly catapult electric cars into a new head-to-head race with combustion.
Although Goodenough will not spell out his precise new idea, he thinks he is on to something. And, because of his record, the field knows that anyone would be foolhardy to bet against him. And John comes from outside the box. He is getting there through agile engineering that has provided incremental improvements to his battery.
No one, including him, can say for sure that Goodenough will succeed this time. The problem of the super-battery is truly hard. Goodenough himself says that everyone else should keep trying for the leap, too. He figures the field has three decades to succeed and commercialize the breakthrough before truly grave problems arise with the environment and resource shortages. That, he thinks, ought to be time enough. Yet again, he might be. See videos and the website here.
By providing your email, you agree to the Quartz Privacy Policy. Skip to navigation Skip to content. Discover Membership. In , a group of archaeologists have discovered a collection of terracotta jars in Khujut Rabu, a village near Baghdad.
The jars contained sheets of copper rolled up with an iron rod. When mixed with an acidic liquid, copper and iron can produce a chemical reaction that results in electricity. It is thought that this earliest form of battery may have been used to electroplate gold into the artifacts of the Parthian Civilization.
The journey which lead to the creation of the battery as we know it today involved one invention after another. Take a look at the historical timeline of the battery and how ideas for this development came to be.
Luigi Galvani , an Italian physicist, discovered a hint that paved the way to the idea of the battery. This was greatly opposed by Alessandro Volta , who believed that the phenomenon was caused by the two dissimilar metals and a humid conductor.
Volta verified this concept through an experiment, which he published in Volta took his research further by making the first wet cell battery. Putting together layers of copper and zinc divided by layers of cardboard or cloth soaked in brine, Volta came up with what is now known as the voltaic pile.
The Voltaic Pile is the first true battery, producing a stable and consistent current. But despite of being capable of delivering consistent currents, the Voltaic Pile cannot produce electricity for a long time. One of its flaws involves electrolyte leaks which cause short-circuits. Another problem is the formation of hydrogen bubbles on the copper, increasing the internal resistance of the battery.
Hydrogen bubbles were eliminated by using a second electrolyte solution produced by the first conductor. The Daniell Cell made use of copper sulfate immersed in an unglazed earthenware vessel filled with a zinc electrode and sulfuric acid. Since it was made out of porous material, the earthenware vessel allowed ions to pass through but prevented the solutions from mixing.
The Daniell Cell was also the first battery to incorporate mercury, used to reduce corrosion. This battery type produced 1. This battery was composed of a central zinc anode soaked into an earthenware vessel containing a solution of zinc sulfate. The porous earthenware pot is immersed in a solution of copper sulfate contained inside a copper can.
0コメント