Caution 3D Printing

One technology trend that's garnering a lot of attention is additive manufacturing, or as we know it, 3D printing.  The technology promises so much - build anything that you can create a blueprint for.  It's going to be huge for industry and for the home user alike.

So many good points but what about the downside?

Let me know what you think about my words of caution.

Attention: new technology ahead

The hardware needed for 3D printing is early generation, sometime prototype level.  For any company investing in these machines there's a definite risk that the printers will quickly be superceded by faster, more powerful, more versatile models.  It would be fair to say that 3D printing on a commercial scale is not there yet.

Similarly for the domestic consumer, the models that you may want to spend your money on are simply way too s-l-o-w for anything more than a hobbyist at this stage.

Buy this hardware now and the chances are you will be looking to re-invest in the not too distant future.

Guns, drugs and bad behaviour

Unlike most of the other technology trends that are portrayed in a good light, 3D printing has been villified by politicians because it takes away their control of what happens within their borders.  There are big concerns that we will see the unlicensed, uncontrolled manufacture of weapons, ammunition and other harbingers of death.

Physical borders have always acted as the last defence to keep out unwelcome imports but when the ability to manufacture that restricted product from a blueprint that came down an internet connection, what hope is there for any kind of control?

The ability to print drugs (given the right ingredients) also sounds warning bells for border control.

Humans are surplus to requirements

Additive manufacturing may become so widespread that the entire fabrication process for virtually any product will be handled exclusively by industrial robots.

If the industrialists of the world invest in the machines over people, what is there left for humans to do in this traditionally labour-intensive industry?

What will happen to the traditional assembly line worker?  What need is there for the component suppliers when the one factory can make all of the parts themselves.  Why would we need the service industries that feed the factories?

Developing nations are hard hit 

So much of the world's manufacturing has already shifted to the places where human labour is cheap - South-east Asia and South America.

If you no longer need huge numbers of people to work for peanuts but instead need a battery of high tech robots to replace them, what happens to all of those disenfranchised people?  How do they find a living? 

Idle hands

My biggest concern with the potential shift in manufacturing processes is the human toll of lost work. It will hit every nation on earth, some harder than others.  It has the potential, if left unchecked, to make people surplus to requirements in the manufacturing world. 

We are already seeing the fall-out from mass unemployment in the bankrupt European Community states.  Civil unrest, riots, crime, lives ruined.

Scale this up to a world where manufacturing has dispensed with human involvement and there are countless numbers of angry and hungry people.  They no longer buy anything because they have no money, they no longer pay taxes because they are not earning.

Where will governments source their funds when the tax system has collapsed?

These are big questions for our leaders and for ourselves.   What will we do to address them and will we do it in time?

Beware radical elements

Revolutionary new materials like graphene can only be good for our future,can't they?  Well, certainly a lot of people are very excited about the positive side of stronger, lighter, more flexible, water repelling materials but  can this be all good?

I'm not one to pour water on a great idea but I do wonder about the ramifications of the large scale introduction of such radically different materials.

Invincibility

Indestructible materials are all very well, until you come to the point where you do want to break them down.   How do you recycle or destroy a product that has been made so strong and impervious to damage?  Will this create a mountain of waste for which there is no disposal other than burial?

Undetectable hostility

Technology that is tiny, light and virtually undetectable is great if you are the one in charge of its deployment. But what happens when a foreign power or a criminal organisation with nefarious intent gets hold of that same technology.  How do you defend your borders against such a threat?

Loss of traditional ways

The construction, manufacturing and the textile industries employ countless millions of people worldwide.   They rely on suppliers and growers to provide the material that they need to make their products.  What happens when those traditional materials are replaced by these new radical materials?  Potentially there is massive impact to the way that whole communities make their living.

Consider the cotton growers who supply the world's textile industry.  If these new textile materials prove to be superior to natural products, the vast cotton fields of the world will be redundant.  That would destroy the livelihood of countless individuals, communities, even nations that depend on the industry.

No built-in obsolescence

Nothing lasts forever, so the saying goes.  However, some of these new materials are so impervious to damage and decay that they may well last substantially longer than a human lifespan.   What could that mean for the economies of the world?  When things stop wearing out what happens to the industries that bank on feeding the need for replacement goods?  What do all the people who make those replacements do now to make a living?

These are big questions for our leaders and for ourselves.   What will we do to address them and will we do them in time?

Oh dear

I wonder if we'll see these appearing as factory refurbished products any time soon . . .

http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/apple-returning-millions-of-defective-iphones-to-foxconn-31688/

http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/04/22/rumor-apple-returned-batch-of-8-million-defective-iphones-to-foxconn

Flick of the wrist

More rumours of a iWatch are circulating.  If such a thing was launched, would it be a success?  I'm not sure it would be.  Younger people don't seem to have grown up wearing a watch.  This is not going to replace all the functionality you have on your smartphone so surely you will still need to carry one of those everywhere you go.  The more I look at this suggested vision of an iWatch the more I think of the bracelets that felons wear whilst on probation.

Oh well, each to their own I suppose.


iWatch rumours (Apple Insider)

A very big pile

The Samsung S4 is already a record breaker.  Less than 1 month after its high profile release it has already shifted 10 million units.  10 million.  Just think about that.  Can you picture 10 million anything?  I can't .  The number is way too big.

Just how big a pile is 10 million phones?

This kind of volume makes me dizzy on a number of levels.  First of all how do you set up a manufacturing operation to churn out that number of devices?  We're not talking about nuts and bolts here, stamped out on a machine.  These are high precision complex devices that need to be assembled, tested, boxed then shipped to all the corners of the earth where they may be sold.  There are some serious logistics involved here.

The designers have done their bit.  They've created a blueprint that can be turned into a plan for assembly into an incredibly clever muli-purpose computer that will fit into your pocket (assuming you've got a big pocket).

They've hit the ground running.  They've moved this large volume of hardware to the retailers and phone providers ready for the big launch then they've opened the front door and in came a tech-hungry public ready to devour this gorgeous thing.  Even with it's price tag above $1000, that was no barrier to this enormous sales figure being achieved in less than 30 days.

Technology assembly line

Just for a moment forget the actual phone technology and the machines that make this possible and just think of the human effort that has gone into a project like this.  Think of all the people in their white, corporate overalls working long hours on the assembly line. Consider all the satellite factories that produced the components that are turned into that shiny new smartphone.  Think of the drivers and pilots that ferried the product around the globe, the marketers that created the campaigns to launch this new tech beast.  Think about the retailers who threw open their shop doors to welcome in those customers in new of a tech fix,  And think about those 10 million individuals who decided that this month was the right time to invest a handsome sum of money in buying the most advanced consumer phone on the market (at least until the next one is launched).

Huge numbers, indeed.  Any closer to being able to appreciate the energy harnessed to make this happen?  No, me neither.

It's great to live in an age of technology but it's also rather humbling when you start thinking too hard about it.

S4 is the fastest selling Android ever (Stuff)

The future of the assembly line (IEEE Spectrum)

When phones go bad

Back in the day

Apple 1 (1976) - how far we have come

Fancy owning a piece of computer history?  Are you flush with cash?  Well, you may need to be if you want to own this first of its kind personal computer.  The Apple 1 was lovingly crafted (and autographed) by Steve Wozniak as a practically hand-built device, back in the dim and distant past of 1976.  Check out a copy of the Apple 1 owner's manual.

Personally signed by Wozniak himself

I thought my Sinclair ZX81 was primitive but this takes the biscuit.  Seeing that tape machine brought back horrible memories of trying in vain to load up programs from cassettes, only to get loading errors and having to start all over again. And you try and tell the young people of today that . . . they won't believe you.

Check out this link to see how much one of these Apple 1s sold for last year.   No, I couldn't believe it either.

You even had to make your own case for the Apple 1

Overnight this latest auction has netted a price of $US650,000, according to this BBC news story.  Apparently, only 100 Apple 1s were ever made and there are just 6 known working models left in the world.  What would you  be prepared to pay for one?

Apple 1 up for grabs (Mashable)

Wozniak original fetches $650,000 at auction (BBC)

Apple 1 Microcomputer Museum (youTube)

ZX81 memories

Yeah Nah

It's here but do I care?

Windows Phone is readily available to anyone who wants one.  Nokia, former darling of the phone market but now struggling to keep up the pace, is staking much of its future on the Windows platform.

Windows Phone has certainly grabbed some market share in sales volumes.  It's overtaken Blackberry - another blast from the recent past.

Yes, it's sold some units, but when a whopping 92% of all smartphones sold are Android or iOS, are we really going to notice the Microsoft offering?

Nobody has yet tried to sell me a Windows phone but plenty of times I'm encouraged to buy a Droid.  No doubt if I stopped by the Apple counter, they would be keen to see me, too.

An also ran - IBM's doomed OS

With Windows Phone I feel like I'm watching IBM's OS/2 Warp all over again.  IBM tried hard to convince the market to give them a go, try something new - they virtually gave OS/2 away for a while but it was really a foregone conclusion.  It could never gain traction and sadly disappeared without a trace and everyone went back to what they knew best.

It's not that OS/2 wasn't a competent OS.  It was just that it was chasing a giant that was just too strong.   I don't know enough about the Windows Phone offering to even know if it's any good.  Sure, it has the might of Microsoft behind it but it's going up against Google and Apple at a time when they have already grabbed the lion's share of this market.

With Windows I think it may be the horse that was laid up for most of these season and missed the race of its life.  The smartphone race is now at full gallop and only the strongest will survive.  People may already have placed their bets and not be keen on a rank outsider.

You may be an Apple fan - no doubt then you'll go with that.  Or else you may be an Android adopter - so much to choose from, it's bewildering.  Who couldn't find a suitable option in this huge stable?

You could instead plump for the new kid on the block and take a chance on a Windows Phone.  It may be great.  Maybe you don't need the zillion apps that are available from the other platforms.  Maybe you are happy to buy effectively the first generation of a new Windows machine.   Are you game?

Yeah Nah.

Putting the pedal down on Windows Phone (Mashable)

Some Windows Phone offerings

High-flying Xero

You have to hand it to Xero - they know where they're going.

Xero's stock price just keeps going skyward with a few hops and skips along the way.  Early investors will have a big smile on their faces, I'm sure.

Although Xero is a local company, they don't think like one.  They work on the global scale.  They realised early on that it would never be sufficient to be just king of Aotearoa so they built their business plans to chase bigger fish.  That plan is now coming to fruition with the possibility of a NASDAQ listing in the not too distant future.

They've certainly left a previous favourite, MYOB, for dust.

The very best of luck to them in the quest for world domination.

All about Xero

Xero home

Xero on Wikipedia

Awards for a local hero gone global  (NZ Herald)

MYOB vs Xero (SmartCompany)

Xero eyes NASDAQ listing (NBR)

Playing fair

There's an infamous saying that goes "Nothing is certain but death and taxes".

Well, no-one has yet managed to cheat death but there sure are plenty of commercial giants that rort the tax systems of the world.

Currently one particular bad fruit  is being quizzed by the US Senate as to  how they could earn $22 billion through an Irish subsidiary, yet paid only $10 million in taxes.

They're certainly not alone in this flagrant abuse of their corporate power.  However, they are the most valuable company in the world and if you were looking for a reason to loathe them, well . . . personally, I'm well beyond the loathing stage.

Senate panel asks for explanations (NZ Herald)

You can ask but you won't necessarily get an answer (TheVerge)

Highly questionable behaviour, again (Guardian)

Are we X-cited

Are you excited about the next generation Xbox?

Check out what they're saying about the Redmond's new challenger for world game domination . . .

All you need to know about the 720 (Pocket lint)

720 unveiled (Guardian)

5 key points (Guardian blog)

Gamespot take on the 720

Riding D-Wave

This is just a bit above my pay grade as an amateur futurist, and a fascinating area that I can only begin to

Is this a quantum computer?

fathom.

When the scientists are squabbling among themselves as to whether this is or isn't what is claimed, then I know that it's going to take a lot of study to even begin to get my head around this stuff.

A special breed of computers able to solve problems that it would take other computers years to crack, assuming they could do it at all?

Check out this article about the D-Wave quantum computer on the excellent BBC Future website.

Big bets on quantum computers (BBC Future)

How does a quantum computer work? (HowStuffWorks)

What is a quantum computer? (The Economist)

Gig starter

As a music fan this story immediately caught my eye.  A simple idea made possible through the power of web and a loyal but untapped fan base.  London-based Songkick has just beta-launched Detour - described as a 'Kickstarter for gigs'.

Do you perhaps live away from the bright lights of the big city?  No-one half decent played in your neck of the woods in living memory?  Do you reckon that there's maybe enough fans of your favourite band to make it worthwhile them coming up your way?  In days gone by, you'd be out of luck.  Chances are that you would have to travel hundreds of miles to see them.  Detour puts the fans in charge and hopefully will help bands to reach more of their base.  Get enough people to pledge on Detour and they'll get in touch with the band to see if it can become a reality.

I don't suppose this is going to appeal to the really big bands but for all those up-and-coming or yesteryear's artists, this could really help.  It could be a godsend for an overseas artist on their first foray into new territory where they know little about their fan base locally. Think about how an idea like this could work in a geographically large area but sparsely populated country like New Zealand.  Through Detour or perhaps a similar service, you may well find that an artist has a previously untapped fan base scattered around the Manawatu.  Get enough people to pledge and you could see that band booking a gig in Palmerston North.

Maybe Thea will visit NZ?

It's a great idea that puts power back in the people's hands.  Managed well you could fill town halls up and down the country with all manner of acts. Expect to see a whole bunch of copycat services springing up all around the world.

'Kickstarter for gigs' (BBC)

Songkick's London site

Songkick Detour (Wired)

Graphene flexibility in your smartphone

Strange ideas

Check out the weird vision of future smartphones in this Samsung concept ad.  I can't really imagine why I'd want a smartphone arranged like this but I do appreciate the wealth of opportunities that a flexible device could open up.

Current screen technology is rigid, primarily because the materials used in the construction are brittle and need to be kept straight to avoid damage.  Modern touchscreens use Indium tin oxide to provide that conductive electrical layer we control with our swipes, taps and flicks.  Indium is rare, expensive and very brittle so hardly an ideal material to build an industry on.

Too precious for touchscreens

What if there was a material that was electrically conductive, cheap to produce, abundant and flexible to replace Indium.  Sounds unlikely or we would already be using it.  Well, that wonder material is just around the corner and thanks to the truckloads of investment from the likes of Samsung, that game changing technology could be just around the corner.

Yes, the material, the answer to so many of our technology woes, is graphene.  Graphene seems to tick all the boxes . . .

• It's really just very thin graphite - we are not going to run out of graphite

  

  Wonderful graphene

• Manufacturing graphene will become cheap and very reliable - it's a natural product, scraped thin to just one atom thick
• It's transparent (because it's so thin)
• It's strong (the strongest material we have on earth)
• It's highly conductive - ideal for small electrical impulses

Can we even begin to comprehend where a material with such mind-boggling properties will take us?

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130306-bend-and-flex-for-mobile-phones

Anode sponge

There are so many exciting research projects underway to find that most elusive of holy grails - the perfect battery.

It's clear that many battery start-ups are focused on improving a specific part of the battery.  Some are looking to see if they can find a battery material superior to lithium - if you believe Pellion, that material may be magnesium.  Others are focused on materials to construct the electrodes from - look at the great work that Amprius are doing with silicon nanowires versus Prieto's version using copper.

Another high-profile start-up with its own unique perspective is Xerion Advanced Battery Corp, founded by
University of Illinois science whiz, Dr Paul Braun.

Braun Research Group (Source: otm.illinois edu)

Braun's research group has developed a technology they call StructurePore, which as the name suggests, creates a porous material that behaves like a high-tech sponge.  Like many of these innovations in the battery world, Xerion have come up with a simple but effective method for fabricating their material.  To make their electrode they begin with a template container, which they fill with tiny glass or polymer balls.  Next they pour in liquid metal which sets around the balls.  When the template and balls are removed the remaining electrode is revealed with millions of tiny pores.  The electrode is then filled with conductive metals.  The result is an electrode that allows the ions to move much more quickly than in a conventional one and delivers huge improvements  in charge and discharge rates.

Although the electrode design is all new this technology works well with all the other components of lithium ion and nickel metal hydride (NiMH) designs, so could well be incorporated into existing processes rather than demand a totally new design.

What's particularly exciting about this technology is the speed with which a battery can be recharged.  Xerion believes that a battery for a cellphone, laptop or camera using their design could be re-charged in ONE MINUTE or less.  A heavier duty version for automotive use in hybrid vehicles could be completely recharged in the time it currently takes to stop and refill the petrol tank.

Let's hope that it's not long before dead cellphones and laptop batteries are a thing of the past.

StructurePore cathode technology

Braun Research Group at University of Illinois

Nanowire from recycled silicon

The technology world produces a lot of silicon - after all most of our computer powered gadgets are awash with the stuff.

However, once the product reaches end-of-life, the silicon is very difficult to recycle.  Most likely it will end up contributing to the shameful waste mountains polluting our world.

There is, though, a very novel use for this computer junk and one that could usher in the next generation of nanotechnology-driven products.   Battery technology is making great inroads into game-changing advances in the electrode design for the next generation of lithium ion batteries.  By replacing the solid graphite (carbon) anode with a 3 dimensional array of silicon nanowires, various teams of researchers are increasing the energy density (power to volume capability) by up to 10 times that of the very best current generation lithium ion batteries.  Silicon is a much better conductor than carbon and it absorbs up to 10 times more lithium ions. It can handle 10 times the electrical current of carbon, allowing for more amps to made available to the power-hungry devices of today.

Nanowires of silicon, anchored and spaced to allow expansion 

Unfortunately the nanowires that make up these next generation electrodes are a very fragile commodity and silicon does have some inherent problems that scientists have needed to overcome.  When used as an electrode, silicon expands about 4 times more than the equivalent carbon based one would and that has led to issues with cracking.  Unless the wires are anchored they quickly disintegrate and become useless.   However, by using colloidal nanosphere lithography manufacturing processes, they can now fabricate perfect "forests" of 50 - 70 micron thick nanowires that are spaced sufficiently to allow for expansion and are coated with a thin layer of copper to improve ion absorption and to protect the fragile structure. This process of using masks to shape materials is not new but its application to the burgeoning nanowire sector brings us a reliable and relatively cheap manufacturing process with huge potential.  It's all very well coming up with great ideas but commercial success is dependent on being able to actually turn that idea into a tangible product.

Check out the battery tech provided by promising start-ups like Amprius, who are using silicon nanowires in their almost-ready-for-market battery that will power some cellphones as early as 2014.  Take a look at the great work that Prieto Battery are doing with the use of copper coated anode sponges - another very clever and demonstrable manufacturing process.

http://cleantechnica.com/2012/09/10/discarded-silicon-gets-new-life-in-lithium-ion-batteries/

How nanowires work (HowStuffWorks)

A carbon future

How game changing is this material?

We all know what kind of impact silicon has had on the computer industry. In fact it's fair to say that we wouldn't have the information technology world of today if some bright spark hadn't worked out how to use this cheap and cheerful material to form the basis of all modern computer chips.  You could rightly say that silicon ushered in a technology revolution.  No exaggeration - a revolution.

So what would your reaction be if you were told that we are now poised on the edge of something that is bigger than the silicon age?  Something so game-changing that the world is only just beginning to wake up to what could be done with this new material.

What is it?  Well, I said it was new but it isn't.  What is new is our ability to manufacture it.  Would you believe that it was discovered by accident by a couple of UK-based Russian scientists.  Their discovery and subsequent research earned them the Nobel prize for Physics in 2010.

OK, enough teasing.  What are we talking about here?  Drum-roll, please - we're talking carbon, well specifically graphite and more specifically a single layer of graphite that is one atom thick - 2 dimensional graphite or, as the scientific world knows it, graphene.

It may be hard to appreciate what graphene is.  After all, at an atom thick you can't see it.  You would need 3 million sheets of graphene to reach the thickness of a pencil lead.  Even when it's deposited on a substrate, it's not very exciting because all you are seeing is the container material.  Graphene research is way too big to cover in a single post.  Check back here for a more detailed look at some of the possibilities for this totally awesome material.

Graphene promo videos on YouTube

Nanowired anode

The Amprius cell is a reality, not vapourware

Here's a battery start-up that has real product in the market.

Amprius, yet another start-up from Stanford University isn't actually making batteries but it is producing vital components for them.  Amprius has developed a very special electrode made from silicon nanowires.  Rather than try raising the huge capital needed to build a manufacturing capability, Amprius has partnered with asian based battery producers.

Source: Amprius Technologies      

As with many of these next generation technologies, actual information about them is scant.  We do know that the nanowire anode can improve energy density by up to 10 times over the current capability of top of the line lithium ion.  This makes them highly desirable in the electrical vehicle sector.  The maximum recharge cycles could also be greatly higher than current technology with a jump from around 500 cycles to 6,000.  This technology will be based on using carbon nanotubes.  The nanotube structure could allow the device to eventually be printed using a special cellulose paper.  It has the potential to give us 'paper batteries'.

Amprius seems to be doing everything right at the moment, having recently raised $25 million from various sources.

Amprius Technologies home

The component market place

Silicon nanotubes in lithium ion batteries

Lighter, turbocharged Lithium

Lithium ion is a battery technology with a huge following, and for good reasons.  Lithium is long lasting, it has great recharge potential and it's not prohibitively expensive.

There is a lot of capital tied up in lithium ion and it's unlikely that any rival technology is ready to knock it off its perch, at least not just yet.

Sila is focused on next generation lithium ion for electric vehicles

A promising looking start-up linked to the next generation Lithium is Sila Nanotechnologies.  Founded at recently as 2011, Sila is a team of Californian entrepreneurs who have partners with the Georgia Institute of Technology. (Yet another battery tech firm owing much of its chemistry and physics know-how to a research focused university).

Information around the net on Sila is currently quite minimal but we do know that they are working to produce lighter, smaller and more powerful lithium ion batteries, specifically targeted at the electric vehicle market.  Their battery may have double the capacity of the current generation of lithium ion.

Sila is backed by a couple of venture capital companies from Silicon Valley, plus they have secured a $1.73 million grant from the US Department of Energy.

I wonder if start-ups like this manage to secure venture capital before they get federal grants or whether the venture capitalists are drawn to companies that have some level of recognition from these research arms of the US government.

Sila sounds like one to watch.  There's great interest in hybrid vehicles now so any technology that could potentially make them lighter and with a longer range on their electric cells, is certainly worth keeping an eye on.

Sila Nanotechnologies

Starts ups with DoE funding

Water battery

Future is wet for grid power storage

Sometimes technology advance has a very simple goal.  It may not be to do things faster or longer, it may be just to do them as cheaply as possible.

 Current changes the colour of Prussian blue dye          

In the arena of grid power storage, cost control is paramount.  Traditionally we don't store generated electricity because it is too expensive to be cost effective.  However, if we had a large capacity battery that was a cheap as chips to make and run, power storage could become viable.

Take solar or wind or any other renewable source where the generator is at the mercy of the weather elements.  During the day solar panels can harness all that sunshine to turn into electricity but at night when the sun disappears over the horizon that power generation capability is lost.  Day time sunshine yields far more power than we could use locally but come night time, when the lights go on and the power consumption goes up, demand cries out for the power we didn't need before.

One Stanford PhD student surveyed this landscape for his thesis and set out to design and build a battery that is so cheap, it could be viable for power storage.  (Have you noticed how it's US based university boffins that seem to be having most of the good ideas in the battery technology field recently?)

Colin Wessels formed a start-up, Alveo Energy to pursue this dream.  His technology uses copper, iron, water and some electrochromic prussian blue dye to create a simple battery.  It's a large unit, the size of about four car batteries and it's heavy too.  Size and weight are not such an issue when a battery is intended for fixed rather than portable usage.  This prototype one is a 50 kg 1 kWh battery.

On the face of it, not a particularly exciting project but cost-wise, this is very exciting indeed.  Wessels reckons his battery can be constructed for less than $100 per kilowatt hour.  Lead batteries are $150 to $200 per kWh and lithium is way more expensive and cost-wise, not really even in the running for use in power storage.

Clearly the US government sees great promise in the Alveo Energy project as they have invested $4 million via an ARPA-E grant (one of the larger grants so far allocated to battery projects).

The ARPA-E project description summarises the goal of the venture:

Open Framework Electrode Batteries for Cost-Effective Energy Storage
Alveo Energy will develop a grid-scale storage battery using Prussian Blue dye as the basis for active material within the battery. Prussian Blue is inexpensive, readily available, and most commonly known for its application in blueprint documents. Alveo will repurpose this inexpensive dye for a new battery that can endure more charges under more extreme circumstances without suffering internal damage, helping to facilitate the adoption and deployment of renewable energy technology.


It will be 2016 before Alveo has a demonstrable prototype but this will certainly be one to watch.

The bottleneck of battery storage for renewable energy (Wired)

$4 million ARPA-E grant for Alveo water based battery

Rapid charger

Rapid charging and longer lasting lithium battery technology

Amy Prieto with her 3D 'sponge' battery

American universities are very good at launching start up commercial ventures for the many exciting technology developments coming out of their labs.

Colorado State chemistry professor, Amy Prieto is the brains behind Prieto Battery.  Amy's technology is a lithium ion battery with an anode (positive electrode) comprising copper nanowires.

The Prieto battery is not like the conventional battery made up of anode and cathode, separated by a liquid electrolyte.  Instead the electrolyte is a solid polymer.  By creating an anode from millions of nanowires this electrode has a much greater surface area than a conventional one, meaning it can store many more lithium ions.

The electrodes are intertwined (or interdigitated) in a 3 dimensional array that greatly increases the power density.  There is almost instant recharge capability at just 5 minutes and the batteries should last 5 times longer than traditional lithium ion.   For a cleaner, greener advantage the solid polymer electrolyte means that the toxic elements found in conventional batteries are largely eliminated.

Prieto is not alone in the use of nanowire and nanotube technology for the electrodes but their technology, and their ability to raise the millions needed for research, means that they are getting much closer to producing the highly anticipated prototype.

Interdigitated (intertwined) electrodes in Prieto Li-Ion battery

Links to Prieto battery technology

Prieto battery home

How the Prieto lithium battery works

The Prieto battery technology (youTube)

Battery sponges (Discovery)

The search for a better battery

Pellion's proving ground

It's just chemistry

How does a chemist improve battery technology?  In the case of Pellion Technologies, they conducted around 10,000 separate experiments to find the ultimate materials for their electrodes.   The answer to their quest lay in magnesium.

Pellion believes the future of batteries is magnesium

Pellion Technologies is a spin-off company from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and has the backing of US government research agency, ARPA-E and venture capitalist, Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures.

Pellion reckons that their low cost magnesium ion batteries will perform better with a higher energy density than existing top-of -the-range lithium ones and they'll be cheaper too.  So, higher power and cheaper?  If their claims are true they could be on to a real winner.

Abundant and cheap Magnesium

Related links

Moving beyond Lithium (Pellion whte paper)

Computer modelling a better battery (GigaOm)

Exploring alternatives to Lithium

Magnesium rather than Lithium for rechargeable car batteries

Power stores of the future

Ambri's prototype liquid metal battery

Ambri's liquid metal battery

Ambri is one of those tiny start-ups with a potentially dazzling future.  It's the brainchild of two MIT researchers, Donald Sadoway and David Bradwell.  They're looking to address one of the major issues with the power industry - inadequate ways to store electricity once it has been generated.

On their website Ambri talks about electricity being "the largest supply chain in the world with no warehouse". Typically, electricity is generated as it is needed - we don't have the capacity to store it en masse for later like we do with water, gas, oil or anything else that we pipe to a destination.

Batteries intended for storage of generated power are not bound by the same physical and practical constraints as those harnessed for mobile use.  We don't need to make them light or small.  Indeed, the Ambri batteries are likely to be as big as a 40-foot shipping container and weigh many tons.  The bigger they are, the more energy they are able to store.  Given that Ambri intends these their batteries for in situ placement at power generation facilities stations, their storage capacity rather than their physical dimensions is the more important consideration.

Sadoway has a background in metallurgy and he hit on the idea of his battery whilst observing how an aluminium smelter works.  He marvelled at the huge amount of power in the liquid metal smelter and he started thinking how he could use this principle for making a large battery.

Like many practical processes this one is pretty straightforward.  Ambri recognises that if industry is going to embrace their product, it needs to be cost effective.  Consequently they have settled on using materials that are cheap, abundant and reliable.

Even though this liquid metal colossus is massive, it is at heart just a battery.  There are electrodes - an anode (positive) and a cathode (negative) kept apart by an electrolyte.  Ambri uses magnesium for the anode, antimony for the cathode and a pile of liquid salts for the electrolyte.

However, unlike a traditional battery where the electrodes are solid, these melt when the battery is heated to its operating temperature of 500 degrees centigrade.  As the battery charges, the liquid magnesium flows through the electrolyte to be re-deposited on the anode.

The battery is actually a whole load of smaller units stacked like ice hockey pucks and wired together in series.  The team hope to have a fully working prototype by 2014, capable of storing 2 megawatt hours of electricity (or enough to power 70 homes for a whole day).

Ambri attracted the attention of some big players and obtained seed money from Bill Gates and the energy giant, Total.  That's a great start for a small company.

They have high hopes that these massive batteries will find a home storing energy produced via renewable options, such as wind and solar farms.  As long as they can get the pricing right for the batteries that future looks very bright indeed.

Links to Ambri liquid metal battery technology

Magnesium, liquid salts and antimony in the Ambri battery

Ambri home

Ambri's grid battery (Technology Review)

Renamed Liquid Metal Battery (GigaOm)

Liquid metal battery is on its way

A convenient foil

Zinc based foil batteries are light, very thin and safer than lithium

Foil battery is ultra-thin and flexible

Imprint Energy has an ambitious mission - to reshape the battery landscape.  As their website proclaims they are "rethinking the battery".

Most of the batteries that power our high consumption smartphones, laptops and tablets are lithium-ion, treasured for it's capacity and rechargeability.  Unfortunately Li-ion needs a lot of packaging around it to keep the highly volatile lithium electrolyte from getting out of control - it explodes in air and water.  Regardless of how thin and light we can make our devices, the lithium batteries add significant weight and bulk to the package.

Recognising that lithium is not going to cut it in the light and portable stakes, Californian start-up Imprint Energy is working with using zinc rather than lithium in their ultra-thin flexible batteries.  Zinc has previously been rejected as a rechargeable battery component because when it is combined with a traditional liquid electrolyte there is a tendency for undesirable crystals of dendrite to form but Imprint has overcome this issue  by using a solid polymer in place of the liquid.

With zinc being much more stable in normal environmental conditions the bulky packaging required with Li-ion can be abandoned, meaning the batteries using this technology can be very, very thin - just the thickness of a couple of human hairs.  They have high hopes that wearable tech and digital smart labels on packaging will be able to make good use of this technology.

Imprint Energy is certainly making people sit up and take notice. They are already churning out small volumes of batteries via a revolutionary printing technique.  The batteries are printed in much the same way as traditional screen printing so the design and shape can be customised to suit virtually whatever the customer wants.  The current production capability is tiny but this could be scaled up massively simply by partnering with a large battery producer.

Let's hope that they can quickly turn this exciting technology into a lucrative commercial reality.

Imprint Energy batteries bring hope for wearable tech (GigaOm)

Imprint Energy home

Back from the dead

Dead or just in need of resuscitating? Single use batteries can live again  

Not all research needs to be frontier type, cutting edge stuff to be worthwhile.

Improving the longevity, durability and useful lifespan of existing products is also very useful - making a good thing better.

That seems to be the philosophy of a group at the National Synchotron Light Source (NSLS) lab in Brookhaven, New York, where they are testing the limits of alkaline batteries.

There is incredible wastage in batteries that are sadly filling up our landfills at an ever increasing rate.  Many have been discarded well before their power producing capability is exhausted.  Judging by what these guys are finding, the industry and the general public don't really appreciate what can be achieved with these mainstream power sources.

The team is looking at how existing batteries (such as the D size alkaline) could be linked together in series to produce a much larger battery.  They're working with so-called 'single use' batteries and finding that they can be re-charged many times to provide considerably more use than the manufacturer intended.  Although everyone seems entranced by the much sexier and more expensive lithium-ion, these manganese and zinc batteries are much cheaper and abundant.

The team is charging and discharging test batteries to the point of exhaustion and they are studying what actually happens within the battery as they degrade.  As they understand more about the chemical reactions and changing properties as they degrade they hope to find ways to get even more juice out of them.

Brookhaven team testing the limits of alkaline batteries

The research is particularly focused on finding workable solutions for storage of electricity generated by the
power grid and the experiments on small, cheap  batteries will hopefully be the forerunner for something much bigger.   Large-scale storage capability that is cheap and readily available could have a huge impact in avoiding the wastage of generated power that currently isn't worth storing.

Brookhaven media release (BNL)

NSLS research hopes to solve electricity storage challenges

How do alkaline batteries work?  (Energizer)