Can you imagine a liquid lithium battery with a range of 1600 km? Toyota, the leader in solid-state batteries that is still under development, does not dare to say this, and the Tesla Model 3 2024 version finally has a battery life of 600, and at this time it has already cried and fainted in the toilet. However, a start-up company in the United States announced on February 13 that they have developed a disruptive battery technology that completely solves the problem of lithium dendrites, improves the safety, cycle life and energy density of lithium metal batteries, and can produce battery packs with a range of up to 1,600 kilometers. So is this news credible or not, and when will this battery be put into use?
This company is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 24m, which may not be familiar to many people, but when it comes to its founder, Jiang Yeming, the industry is well-known. Jiang Yeming was born in Taiwan, is now a professor in the Department of Materials at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was elected as an academician of the National Academy of Engineering in 2009, and the Google academic h-index reached 107, which means that at least 107 articles have been cited at least 107 times, with a total of more than 40,000 citations, and he is a well-known bull in the field of materials.
The disruptive battery technology announced by 24M is a revolutionary new electrolyte developed specifically for lithium metal batteries, Eternalyte, which can significantly improve the cycle life and rate capability of lithium metal batteries in electric vehicles, energy storage and consumer applications. Combining ETERNALYTE with the company's recently developed ETOP and IMPERVIO technologies puts a troika on lithium-ion batteries, providing an excellent suite of battery technologies for a sustainable energy future.
Isn't it unconscious? So what's going on with these troikas, and what's so special about them?
The first carriage etop, literally translated as electrode-to-pack technology, refers to the electrode directly packaged into the battery pack, without the need for separate batteries and modules. Current lithium-ion batteries use a single cell building block and battery pack with a large amount of supporting metal and plastic inside the housing, increasing weight and manufacturing costs and reducing energy density.
ETOP removes these unnecessary materials and achieves the highest energy density while reducing costs, with a packaging efficiency of more than 70%, which is currently the highest pack-level volume utilization.
In short, like Tesla Model Y with 2170 batteries, there are 4400 batteries in the battery pack, and there are 830 batteries in the 4680.
The second carriage impervio is a new type of battery separator that uses proprietary technology to block the growth of lithium dendrites and enables the safety of the entire battery pack by continuously monitoring the battery to discharge and shut down before a potential short circuit occurs.
The separator is the most critical component of the battery, and if the positive and negative electrolytes are separated, lithium dendrites can puncture the separator, which can lead to catastrophic events.
The 24m was tested against a benchmark battery that did not use an Impervio separator, including contamination of the positive electrode with stainless steel, deliberately exposing the copper on the negative electrode, and the other cells were quickly short-circuited, while the battery using the Impervio separator inhibited dendrite growth without any problems at all.
The third troika, eternallyte electrolytes, is a low-cost solution specifically for lithium metal anodes.
At present, the mainstream lithium-ion battery uses graphite anode, with a theoretical capacity of only 372mAh g, while the lithium metal anode is as high as 3860mAh g, which is considered to be the ultimate solution for lithium batteries. However, the lithium dendrite problem of lithium metal anode batteries has not been solved, and the cycle life of the liquid electrolyte used with lithium metal anode is also extremely poor, especially the fast charging is even more miserable, resulting in the battery being scrapped soon.
Eternalallyte solves this problem perfectly, and when used in conjunction with Impervio, it completely prevents the growth of all lithium dendrites, achieving extremely good cycling performance and very low internal resistance.
To prove this, 24M tested a lithium-metal battery using an eternallyte electrolyte, with a cell cell energy density of 391Wh kg and an ETOP encapsulated battery pack of 350Wh kg, which was cycled more than 500 times at a 1C charge-discharge rate and still maintained 83% capacity, which means that it can travel 1,600 km per charge and 800,000 km over its entire life cycle.
I'm a little skeptical about this key indicator, I don't know how 24m was calculated, because 350Wh kg doesn't seem to be up to this mark, but a lot of reduction in the battery metal casing and the use of lithium metal anodes can indeed lead to a large increase in the energy density of the battery, and it is also possible to double or triple it.
Another test is to use Li-Li Base Cells, which is a standard test battery used to test the effect of different lithium anode modification methods on cycle stability and lithium deposition overpotential, which can achieve more than 3,000 cycles without short circuit or increased internal resistance in continuous 4C rate charging and discharging. This means that it has extremely good rate performance, that is, performance under high-rate charging and discharging conditions, which can achieve fast charging.
Isn't it too powerful? If it can really achieve such excellent performance, then this may really be like 24m said, it is a revolutionary new electrolyte, and the troika using 24m battery technology can completely solve the various challenges faced by the current lithium metal anode, including safety, cycle life and rate capability, to create a more efficient and low-cost next-generation lithium battery, so that electric vehicles can officially have face-to-face hand-to-hand combat with fuel vehicles.
But 24m is really so powerful, a start-up, there is no product, just want to overturn the existing power battery pattern, pull the lithium-ion battery down, is it too self-sufficient? At present, I have not found out what the composition of the Impervio separator and eternallyte electrolyte is, and the 24m seems to be secretive, probably for reasons of secrecy, but it may also be considered to be a PPT and brag to attract investment.
There is not much information about the 24m that can be seen so far, and they plan to achieve a mass production demonstration this year and fully introduce it to the market next year or the year after. I see a lot of new battery research and development, it seems to be strictly confidential, such as the United States Quantumscape, Japan Toyota, Taiwan Huineng, and China's several giants, but also refuse to disclose anything, only talk about performance, not to talk about data, this may be because the competition is too fierce, and the final winner is one or two technologies, the huge demand for batteries in the future, has made the research and development of new batteries white-hot, various technologies and methods emerge in endlessly, a lot of money is invested in it, you reveal a little, may have been learned by others, so to what extent 24m has been developed, the outside world may really know nothing, and can only make judgments based on their words.
Jiang Yeming, founder of 24M, said that the basic process of traditional battery production has not changed for more than 30 years, and 24M has completely transformed the manufacturing process and battery pack design, creating a whole new set of battery solutions that make next-generation technologies such as lithium metal anode batteries possible. In any case, electric vehicles, electric aircraft, and energy storage are just getting started, and it remains to be seen which technology will have the last laugh. Regardless of whether they succeed or not, whether they succeed or not, their exploration is the most valuable asset.