(Battery)多年来，电池技术取得了长足的进步。如果没有先进的现代电池技术，无人机(drones)和智能手机等小工具将是不切实际的。
但是，电池总是可以更好！
固态电池似乎是下一个重大进步，使用它们的产品指日可待。这意味着现在是熟悉它们是什么以及它们为何重要的最佳时机。
“固态”是什么意思？
无论是铅酸汽车电池、一次性碱性电池还是手机中的锂聚合物电池(lithium polymer batteries)，它们都使用液体电解质。电解液是连接电池内部两个端子的导电物质。电子流过电解液，使电池要么积累电荷，要么放电。
固态电池使用固体电解质，而不是传统的液体电解质。这是两种电池技术之间唯一的根本区别。这听起来很简单，但工程师和科学家几十年来一直在努力想出一种可以充当电解质的固体材料。
固态(Solid State)电池有什么难的？(Hard)
各种材料，例如陶瓷和锂金属，都具有作为固态电解质的潜力。问题是陶瓷方法导致电池性能不佳。锂金属很有前途，但也有一个致命的缺陷。随着电池的充电和放电，金属“枝晶”会在电解液中生长。电池可能会短路并造成危险。
在过去几年中，为这些问题寻找实用且经济可行的解决方案一直是多家公司和研究团队的使命。现在这项工作即将获得回报。
为什么要经历所有这些麻烦？让我们看看固态电池相对于传统电池的优势。
安全
电池储存了大量的能量，并且总是存在这种能量以不受控制的方式释放的危险。发生这种情况时，可能意味着火灾、爆炸和其他不良后果。假设枝晶问题得到解决，固态电池有望更安全、更稳定。一方面，它们不易燃，因此电池起火应该成为过去。
这不仅对汽车和无人机等电动汽车很重要，对智能手机和笔记本电脑等个人电子产品也很重要。每年都有许多人因电子产品中的电池起火而受伤。结果整个房子都被烧毁了！
充电速度
现代锂电池可以以惊人的速度充电(charge at impressive speeds)，但仍然需要很长时间才能充满。在传统锂离子电池全部横向运行之前，您可以注入多少能量是有限度的。固态电池的充电速度有望比我们目前使用的电池快六倍。这意味着在 5 分钟内将您的手机从电量充满到充满，或者charging an electric car to 80% in 15。
能量容量和大小
锂(Lithium)离子电池目前具有向公众出售的所有电池类型中最高的能量密度。然而，它的密度仍然比汽油低很多倍。虽然固态电池不能使电池达到与天然气相提并论的水平，但它确实有望将每体积的能量密度提高一倍以上。
换句话说，如果您使用固态型号更换手机中的电池，理论上它可以运行两倍的时间而不会增加尺寸。这是电动汽车的另一个大卖点，由于里程焦虑，电动汽车并没有那么受欢迎。
寿命和耐用性
大多数当前的锂离子电池在大约 500 次完整的充放电循环后开始退化。在那之后，电池开始失去它的容量(battery begins to lose its capacity)，直到它几乎不能保持充电。在现在倾向于使用密封电池的智能手机中，这对设备的使用寿命提出了严格的限制。固态电池有望大大提高这一限制。多达五次。
因此，典型的日常使用手机电池可能在两到三年后开始退化，而固态电池将保持其额定容量长达十五年(fifteen years)。在电动汽车中，更换电池的成本非常高，这可能会对此类车辆的拥有成本产生巨大影响。
固态电池的弱点
如果这一切听起来好得令人难以置信，那么该技术有一些警告。在实现固态电池技术的广泛采用之前，其中一些问题仍然需要解决。
- 成本(Cost )也许是最大的敌人。研究(Research)团队和初创公司正在努力使这些电池的生产过程更便宜且可扩展。一些公司声称很接近，但在我们看到使用这些电池的产品的实际价格之前，我们不会知道他们有多成功。
- 这些电池也在低温下挣扎(struggle at low temperatures)。因此，将它们绝缘或保持在良好工作温度的解决方案是挑战的一部分。
什么时候可以购买固态(Solid State)电池？
有几家公司，如Solid Power和QuantumScape，声称处于商业固态电池应用的风口浪尖。
丰田计划最早在(Toyota)2021 年(2021)销售固态电池电动汽车。Solid Power和QuantumScape的目标(QuantumScape)是分别在 2022 年和 2024 年推出用于汽车的电池。这意味着在接下来的几年中，我们可能正处于电池革命的开端。
那是在我们甚至进入使用石墨烯的可能性之前。这种神奇的材料有望带来更好的电池，无论它们是否含有液体或固体电解质。让石墨烯发挥作用的时间比预期的要长，但科学家和工程师现在已经可以购买混合石墨烯(hybrid graphene powerbank)移动电源了。真的(Truly)，未来就在这里。
What Are Solid State Batteries and Why Are They Important?
Battery technology has come a long way over the years. Gadgets like drones and smartphones would be impractical without advanced modern battery technology.
However, batteries could always be better!
Solid state batteries seem to be the next big advancement and products that use them are around the corner. This means now is the perfect time to familiarize yourself with what they are and why they’re important.
What Does “Solid State” Mean?
Whether it’s a lead acid car battery, alkaline disposables, or lithium polymer batteries in a phone, they all use a liquid electrolyte. The electrolyte is a conductive substance that connects the two internal terminals of the battery. Electrons flow through the electrolyte, allowing the battery to either build up an electrical charge or to discharge it.
A solid state battery uses a solid electrolyte, instead of the traditional liquid electrolyte. That’s the only fundamental difference between the two battery technologies. It sounds simple enough, but engineers and scientists have been struggling for decades to come up with a solid material that can act as an electrolyte.
What’s Hard About Solid State Batteries?
Various materials, such as ceramics and lithium metals, offer potential as solid state electrolytes. The problem is that the ceramic approach has resulted in poor battery performance. Lithium metals are promising, but have a fatal flaw. As the battery is charged and discharged, metal “dendrites” grow through the electrolyte. The battery can short-circuit and turn into a hazard.
Finding practical and economically viable solutions to these issues has been the mission of several companies and research teams over the past few years. Now that work is about to pay off.
Why go through all this trouble? Let’s look at the benefits that solid state batteries promise over traditional ones.
Safety
Batteries store large amounts of energy and there’s always a danger that this energy can be released in an uncontrolled way. When that happens, it can mean fire, explosions and other unwanted outcomes. Solid state batteries, assuming the dendrite issue is resolved, promise to be safer and more stable. For one thing, they aren’t flammable, so battery fires should be a thing of the past.
This is not only important for electric vehicles such as cars and drones, but also for personal electronics such as smartphones and laptops. Many people are injured every year by battery fires in their electronic gadgets. Entire houses have been burned to the ground as a result!
Recharge Speed
Modern lithium batteries can charge at impressive speeds, but they still take a long time to fill up. There’s a limit to how much energy you can pour into a traditional lithium ion battery before it all goes sideways. Solid state batteries promise to charge as much as six times faster than the batteries we currently use. That means charging up your phone from empty to full in five minutes or charging an electric car to 80% in 15.
Energy Capacity and Size
Lithium ion batteries currently have the highest energy density of any battery type sold to the public. Yet it’s still many times less dense than gasoline. While solid state batteries don’t bring batteries up to par with gas, it does promise to more than double the energy density per volume.
In other words, if you changed the battery in your phone using a solid state model, it could theoretically run twice as long without increasing in size. This is yet another big selling point for electric vehicles, which aren’t as popular as they could be, thanks to range anxiety.
Lifespan and Durability
Most current lithium ion batteries start to degrade after about 500 full charge-discharge cycles. After that point the battery begins to lose its capacity until it can barely hold a charge at all. In smartphones, which now tend to have sealed batteries, this puts a hard limit on device lifespan. Solid state batteries promise to greatly increase that limit. As much as five times.
So, where a typical daily-use phone battery might start to degrade after two to three years, a solid state battery would remain at its rated capacity for up to fifteen years. In electric cars, where the replacement of batteries is extremely costly, that could have a dramatic effect on the cost of ownership for this class of vehicles.
Solid State Battery Weaknesses
If this all sounds too good to be true, there are a few caveats to the technology. Some of these still need to be solved before widespread adoption of solid state battery technology is achieved.
- Cost is perhaps the greatest foe. Research teams and startup companies are working hard on making the production process for these batteries cheaper and scalable. Some companies claim to be close, but we won’t know how successful they’ve been until we see the actual prices on products with these batteries.
- These batteries also struggle at low temperatures. Therefore, solutions that involve insulating them or keeping them at a good operational temperature are part of the challenge.
When Can You Buy Solid State Batteries?
There are a few companies like Solid Power and QuantumScape, which claim to be at the cusp of commercial solid state battery applications.
Toyota plans to have solid state battery electric vehicles for sale as early as 2021. Both Solid Power and QuantumScape are aiming for a rollout of batteries for vehicles in 2022 and 2024 respectively. This means that in the next couple of years we could be right at the start of a battery revolution.
That’s before we even get into the possibilities that come from using graphene. This wonder material promises even better batteries, whether they have liquid or solid electrolytes in them. Getting graphene to play ball has eluded scientists and engineers for longer than expected, but you can already buy a hybrid graphene powerbank right now. Truly, the future is here.
