> The big challenge with lithium-metal batteries has always been chemistry.
No. The big challenge for lithium metal batteries (and every other battery research project) is, has always been, and always will be, manufacturability.
Five or six years ago I contemplated starting a satirical blog, "Revolutionary Battery Chemistry of the Week", modelled after the "Dinosaur Fossil of the Week" blog, which sadly seems to have disappeared.
Since then, thousands of "breakthrough", "revolutionary" battery chemistries have been announced. Yet, somehow, actual in-use batteries are based on incremental improvements to Li-NMC and LiFePO4 chemistries. A primary reason is manufacturability.
You don't have dendrites growing in your BLT? I mean I know bacon is essential for a BLT but I didn't know it was stopping all sorts of shenanigans growing out of the tomato :-)
TLDR: it's a solid-state lithium-metal battery design which is able to stop the growth of lithium dendrites which usually make that design unstable; lithium-metal has higher energy density and sustains currents that could fully charge a car in "10 to 20 minutes".
Usual disclaimer: "the flexibility and versatility of our multilayer design makes it potentially compatible with mass production procedures in the battery industry. Scaling it up to the commercial battery won’t be easy and there are still some practical challenges, but we believe they will be overcome.”
No. The big challenge for lithium metal batteries (and every other battery research project) is, has always been, and always will be, manufacturability.
Five or six years ago I contemplated starting a satirical blog, "Revolutionary Battery Chemistry of the Week", modelled after the "Dinosaur Fossil of the Week" blog, which sadly seems to have disappeared.
Since then, thousands of "breakthrough", "revolutionary" battery chemistries have been announced. Yet, somehow, actual in-use batteries are based on incremental improvements to Li-NMC and LiFePO4 chemistries. A primary reason is manufacturability.