Featured in The quality issue – 04-2018

The cells of the future

Li-ion storage: battery manufacturers have a major task ahead of them, they have to meet runaway global demand, improve the performance, safety and longevity of storage devices, and of course bring down price. Instead of hoping for a big breakthrough, they are pursuing an approach involving many small steps.

By

Cornelia Lichner

18 Jun 2018

Photo: BMZ GmbH

Reports of new and surprising processes promising increased battery capacity and charge rate, or of batteries without any lithium at all continue to make waves. It seems that at any moment, researchers could make that decisive breakthrough that would completely transform the storage market. And indeed, there have been some surprising developments. Researchers in Germany recently reported that porphyrin could increase the charging speed of batteries many times over. But although the researchers led by Maximilian Fichtner have …

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