button cell battery cr1620 technology: Or the ultimate way to deal with the "explosion" problem

When facing a group of zombies, instead of punching and kicking them, it is better to throw a Note7. Oh, and iPhone7.

Why are the lithium-ion batteries of these mobile phones so unsafe? Is there any solution? What is the final solution to prevent lithium-ion batteries from exploding? What are the solid-state batteries? How far away are these batteries from us?

In addition, the author also sorted out the current status of the button cell battery cr1620 industry and took stock of four button cell battery cr1620 companies. Solid-state batteries will eventually become mainstream, and these companies are on the way.

If Samsung doesn’t cry, Apple will also explode.

An article from the American technology blog boyGeniusReport was published early this morning, and a new Apple iPhone 7 seemed to have exploded. A netizen with the nickname @kroopthesnoop posted a photo on the Reddit forum. His black iPhone 7 was severely damaged, with a cracked screen and clear burnt marks on the frame.

Apple's stock price opened lower on Thursday.

Previously, Samsung Note7 mobile phone has caused nearly 40 explosion accidents around the world. On the afternoon of September 26, another National Bank Note7 exploded. This was the fourth Note7 explosion in my country.

The Samsung Note7 used by Nathan Dornacher, a user in Florida, USA, exploded. He had been charging the Note7 in the car. The car's steering wheel, instrument panel, etc. have been changed beyond recognition.

On the afternoon of September 2, 2016, Samsung Electronics held a press conference in South Korea. Koh Dong-jin, president of the mobile department, publicly apologized for the Samsung Note7 battery explosion and announced that due to battery defects, Samsung would stop selling Note7 mobile phones and recall 250 units. Wanbu Note7.

Samsung may continue to suffer losses of nearly 5 billion U.S. dollars due to this explosion. As Samsung contributes more than one-fifth of South Korea's GDP, this time it has really alarmed the country.

Six days later, the U.S. Federal Administration (FAA) issued a statement strongly recommending that passengers turn off the Note 7 power supply on board the aircraft and do not use or charge it. Then, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CpSC) officially called on consumers to stop using Note7 and turn off the power. The domino effect has begun. Departments in many countries continue to issue warnings to remind passengers to stop using Note7, including my country's civil aviation.

Netizens decorated Note7 as a terrorist, saying that Note7 is the real bomb.

According to Samsung itself, the Note7 has a problem with the cell of its lithium-ion battery. Due to a manufacturing process error, the cathode and anode of the battery came into contact, causing the battery core to overheat and cause an explosion.

It's not scary to explode once, but it's scary to continue to explode. This can’t help but remind people of Tesla, which also continued to catch fire due to batteries.

At the end of 2015, when Tesla was still busy counting last year's impressive global delivery volume of 50,580 vehicles, a Model S in Norway suddenly caught fire while charging on January 1 - luckily there was no one in the car.

Since the power lithium-ion battery used by Tesla is a ternary lithium-ion battery, and the ternary lithium-ion battery cannot be extinguished directly with water or carbon dioxide when burning, the special copper powder water is too expensive and uncommon, so the Norwegian firefighters at the time Foam could only be used to control the surrounding fire until the Model S was completely destroyed.

Screenshot of ModelS being burned.

The safety of traditional lithium-ion batteries has always been a sword of Damocles, hanging in people's minds.

Why are lithium-ion batteries prone to explosion?

Let’s first take a look at the anatomy of a lithium-ion battery:

A general lithium-ion battery consists of a positive electrode, a negative electrode, an electrolyte, and a separator. Lithium ions run back and forth between the positive and negative electrodes to complete the charge and discharge process. With electrolytes, lithium ions can run. The positive and negative electrodes are separated by a separator made of ceramic or other polymers, so that the positive and negative electrodes of the battery are prevented from direct contact.

The safety hazard lies in this diaphragm. Once high voltage and overheating occur, the separator can easily be punctured, causing the positive and negative electrodes to come into contact and cause an internal short circuit. According to reports, Samsung uses thinner separator materials in order to increase the energy density of batteries and extend battery life, which is why accidents occur frequently.

Think about it, a Tesla uses more than 7,000 18650 lithium-ion batteries, and if one of them fails,

More than 7,000 lithium-ion batteries are tightly arranged on the Tesla chassis.

Only one change can completely solve the problem - changing the liquid electrolyte to a solid one

Solid electrolytes allow the positive and negative poles of the battery to never come into contact. Even if overheating occurs, the solid electrolyte only melts into an insulator and returns to a solid state after the temperature drops, without analyzing gas and excess heat.

If a lithium-ion battery is replaced with a solid electrolyte, it is called a button cell battery cr1620.

Humanity has been exploring solid-state batteries for more than sixty years. The first solid-state batteries that were processed were not thick or round, but like a thin film.

The first person to report the production of solid-state batteries was the Japanese. In 1982, Japan's Hitachi Company first stated that it had produced a button cell battery cr1620 with a thickness less than 10 μm, which was a thin film. But the battery's power is too low to power any electronic devices.

Thin film batteries now have more mature products. In 2008, the American company InfinitepowerSolutions (IpS) launched an all-solid-state thin-film battery. It is only the size of a fingernail and two pieces of paper thick. It can be charged to 90% of its power in 15 minutes. It can be charged and discharged 100,000 times and can be used for at least 15 years. Because it is fully solid-state, this thin-film battery can be bent at will and can be used safely in the temperature range of -40°C to 85°C, and even underwater for more than a thousand meters.

In 2015, Infinitepower Solutions was acquired by Apple and began researching solid-state batteries for wearable devices. It is conceivable that if the Apple Watch uses a button cell battery cr1620, it can solve the battery life and size issues.

This thin-film-shaped button cell battery cr1620 is widely used in the microelectronic device market. Worldwide, there are more than a dozen companies that have patents for thin-film batteries. In addition to the two mentioned above, there are also French bellcore, American Cymbet, Huineng Technology, and Russian GSNanotech.

Flexible thin-film lithium-ion batteries processed by Russian company GSNanotech.

But the processing cost of thin film batteries is indeed too high. It uses a technology called vapor deposition, and the equipment used often costs millions. If thin-film batteries are used in mobile phones, an Apple can sell for more than 1 million.

In addition, because the electrodes are thin films, thin film batteries can store very little energy. Not to mention electric cars, mobile phones cannot even supply the power they need.

More people are turning their attention to large-capacity non-film solid-state batteries. But for non-thin film batteries, the current technology is not very reliable.

There are two main bottlenecks: First, the ionic conductivity of the solid electrolyte is too low, that is, lithium ions run slowly in the solid state, and the battery relies on lithium ions running between the positive and negative electrodes to achieve charge and discharge, so this means that the battery Charging and discharging are slow. Second, the contact between the solid electrolyte and the electrode is not as good as that between the liquid electrolyte and the electrode, resulting in too high interface resistance, which will significantly reduce battery performance.

In non-thin film batteries, there are three materials that can be used as electrolytes: polymers, sulfides, and oxides. Many companies say they are making batteries with polymer electrolytes, but they are not actually making polymer solid-state batteries, but gel electrolytes, such as Sony and Samsung. The state of gel is between solid and liquid. In fact, there is no safety issue at all, and it is difficult to increase the energy density of gel batteries. So Samsung later simply gave up on gel electrolytes.

Most other manufacturers, including my country New Energy Technology (ATL), only apply a layer of polymer on the separator to bond the separator to the positive and negative electrodes. By the way, ATL is the world’s largest polymer battery supplier, supplying Samsung, Apple, Huawei, OppO and other companies.

When will solid-state batteries enter large-scale industrialization?

Most people in the industry are optimistic. The industry believes that products with more than twice the performance of existing lithium-ion batteries are expected to appear within three years. In 2013, the U.S. Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR) said that within 5 years (2018), a battery with an energy density of 5 times (compared to ordinary lithium-ion batteries) and a price reduced to 1/5 will be developed.

But scholars in the field of scientific research are conservative - they believe that after all, graduate products and being able to form an industry are two different things. In the first half of 2016, Dr. Li Hong, a researcher at the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said: It will be at least until 2020 that the solid-state batteries produced by the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences may test the water to the level of commercialization, and it may take longer to achieve true all-solid state.

Although it is impossible to achieve a leap from liquid to solid state in industry, this does not mean that the industry has nothing to do in the field of solid-state batteries. Fengrui Capital investor Zhu Yizhou told the author that we can find a way to transition from liquid to solid. For example, the electrolyte of Solid Energy Systems, a lithium-ion battery company hatched from MIT, is both solid and liquid: a solid electrolyte film is first overlaid on the metal lithium electrode, and then a quasi-ionic flame-retardant liquid is added. The resulting battery is half the size of a traditional battery and can provide more energy.

Solid-state batteries have good performance but high cost, so we should first target industries that have high demand for safety and stability without considering cost. The manufacturing process of solid-state batteries is different from that of traditional batteries. It is necessary to make full use of traditional battery processing equipment and prepare to rebuild the entire processing line, thereby reducing processing costs. Zhu Yizhou said.

Japan is far ahead of the world in the industrialization of large-capacity solid-state batteries. Toyota and Hitachi Zosen are both leading companies in the button cell battery cr1620 industry. In 2009, Japan's New Energy Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) launched a 21 billion yen plan to research batteries nationwide, hoping to develop rechargeable batteries with an energy density more than five times the current level by 2030. From the current perspective, this time may be greatly advanced.

South Korea is not lagging behind either. Samsung also has a button cell battery cr1620 research institute in Japan - if it is developed early, Samsung can replace it with solid-state batteries.

After Japan and South Korea, they are followed by Europe, the United States, and my country.

There are already electric vehicles in France using solid-state batteries, but the solid-state batteries they use still have a separator in the middle. They are not truly all-solid-state, and they have not yet been used on a large scale. Americans only have technology and no products that can be mass-produced. There are a lot of startup companies here, such as: Seeo, SolidEnergySystem, Solidpower, QuantumeScape, etc.

The Chinese are still in the research stage. Related targets include Qingtao Energy, CATL, BYD, Microvast Power, etc., and the research and development progress is fast or slow. Among them, Qingtao Energy is located in Xuyi, Jiangsu and was established by a team of academician Nan Cewen. At the same time, Academician Nan holds my country’s first all-solid-state patent.

The author has taken stock of four companies developing solid-state batteries. Although France's batScap has products in use, it is not a true all-button cell battery cr1620; other companies currently only have technology.

batScap

batScap, a subsidiary of France's Bollore, develops solid-state batteries that can be used in electric vehicles. The development of batScap for solid-state batteries is a key to Bolore's layout in the energy field.

batScap makes polymer solid-state batteries that need to be heated. Because the ionic conductivity of the polymer is too low at room temperature, it means that lithium ions run slowly between the electrodes, and charging and discharging are also slow. The ionic conductivity of the polymer can only be increased after heating.

Starting from the end of 2011, Bolore used its self-developed EVbluecar to provide the car sharing service Autolib in Paris and the suburbs of France, which means exchanging vehicles after arriving at the destination. This car uses batScap's button cell battery cr1620, with a specification of 30kWh. At present, there are nearly 4,000 bluecars of this kind, with about 900 service stations and 4,500 chargers, which are used 18,000 times a day.

France's button cell battery cr1620 electric cars are charging.

However, batteries that require heating to be used are difficult to promote on a large scale. Electric vehicles can use the heat generated during driving to maintain an operating temperature of 60 to 80°C. But when parking, you have to use the heater inside the battery pack to maintain the temperature, which consumes about 200W of power per second, which is about the same as a refrigerator. Always connect the charger during parking. Someone has made an estimate that on average over a year, the heater consumes more electricity when parked than when driving.

However, according to a button cell battery cr1620 technician, batScap’s polymer button cell battery cr1620 actually has a separator in the middle, which is not what we call all-solid-state at all.

Solidpower

Solidpower USA was founded in 2012 and is located in Louisville, Kentucky, USA. It has a factory of more than 650 square meters in the Colorado Technology Center. The founding team includes many professors and associate professors from the University of Colorado Boulder (UCb). These professors have very strong backgrounds. For example, Professor SeheeLee alone has 18 related patents.

Solidpower receives more money from the government. In 2013, it received US$3.46 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy and US$250,000 in funding from the Colorado Department of Economic Development and International Trade (COEDIT). At the end of 2014, it received another US$2.9 million in funding from the US Air Force.

The battery energy density of Solidpower button cell battery cr1620 reaches 600Wh/kg, which is more than twice the battery capacity on the market.

Sakti3

Sakti3 is a venture startup company established in 2007 by a professor from the University of Michigan. Sakti means power in Sanskrit, and 3 is the atomic number of lithium, which together represents the power of lithium. This company uses evaporation to prepare inorganic solid electrolytes and claims to have achieved high-efficiency mass production.

AnnMarieSastry, a professor at the University of Michigan, is the company's CEO.

It is worth mentioning that Sakti3 received US$15 million in financing from home appliance giant Dyson in 2015 and was acquired by Dyson for US$90 million at the end of the year. In September 2016, Dyson announced an investment of 1.4 billion to build a battery factory.

Sakti3 announced that it has created a battery with an energy density of 550Wh/kg, which is about 50% higher than that of ordinary lithium-ion batteries. The battery storage capacity is twice that of the lithium-ion batteries currently used by Tesla. Sakti3 told the media that they have produced a prototype of this button cell battery cr1620 at their small experimental site in Michigan and expect to achieve commercialization within two to three years.

However, the industry targetsThere are many voices about Sakti3. Many scientific researchers believe that Sakti3 has no products and is just hyping the concept of solid-state batteries.

Toyota

In 2013, Toyota announced that it plans to fully commercialize all-solid-state batteries in 2020. Its energy will be three to four times that of lithium-ion batteries, and lithium-air batteries will be used in the next few years.

Many Japanese companies attach great importance to ion conductivity. High ion conductivity means that lithium ions run faster between the positive and negative electrodes, and the speed of charging and discharging is faster. The ion conductivity of sulfide electrolytes at room temperature is similar to that of liquid electrolytes, so many Japanese companies are studying sulfides. Toyota is a representative.

According to the patent published by Toyota in 2014, the all-button cell battery cr1620 they developed improves the problem of poor contact between solid electrolytes and electrodes, and uses a wet coating process to prepare the intermediate electrolyte, making the electrolyte very thin, thereby reducing the battery volume. At the same time, Toyota enlarged the size of the battery cell, expanded the battery area by 50 times, and increased the capacity by a thousand times.

Toyota used solid-state batteries in electric cars in experiments.

An Apple technician revealed to the author that Toyota's button cell battery cr1620 industrialization will most likely not use the above-mentioned materials, and they may have published this patent just to mislead the industry.

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