Battery developers should emulate semiconductor technology roadmap

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Lithium ions continue to get improved and has a lot more investment than the beyond lithium ion battery technology

Tesla’s investment in its Gigafactory, which will produce lithium-ion batteries, will total around $5 billion.

Lux Research found that beyond lithium-ion batteries had $40 million per year in funding over eight years.

Batteries are about a $40 billion global market and

will be about $133 billion by 2024

This estimate could be low if electric cars achieve the growth rates projected by Tesla.

The

Global semiconductor market is about $300 billion and there is $56 billion in semiconductor research.

Batteries are critical to cars and devices and improved batteries could enable vastly improved airplanes and drones and other applications.

Sulfur represents a natural cathode partner for metallic Li

and, in contrast with conventional lithium-ion cells, the chemicals processes include dissolution from the anode surface during discharge and reverse lithium plating to the anode while charging. As a consequence, Lithium-Sulfur allows for a theoretical specific energy in excess of 2700Wh per kg, which is nearly 5 times higher than that of Li-ion.

Lithium Air and other battery technologies could have several times the energy density beyond lithium ion or lithium sulfur.

Reposted via Next Big Future