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| The Li-ion battery has new competitors |
The main inventor (Hideaki Horiei), who helped market lithium-ion batteries and worked on electric and hybrid cars from Nissan, said he had the potential to reduce production costs by 90% and significantly improve safety.
Lithium-ion batteries play a central role in the technological world as they drive everything from smartphones to smart cars.
Harry founded APB Corp. in Tokyo in 2018 to manufacture polymer batteries. The company was supported by several companies earlier this year and is currently preparing a large production facility. It is scheduled to start next year.
The battery manufacturing process is the basic unit of each battery. It is very complex, requires special conditions to control moisture, filters continuous air and is very precise to prevent contamination of highly reactive materials.
The manufacturing process can be very expensive, so only a few large companies (such as LG Chem, CATL, and Panasonic) can spend billions of dollars to build suitable factories.
Hurry's innovation relies on replacing battery core components with resin structures, filling metal electrodes and liquid electrodes.
He said this method greatly simplifies and speeds up the manufacturing process. The change allows the 10-meter-long sheets to be stacked on top of each other to increase capacitance, and is also fire-resistant at the sting with resin-based batteries.
Lithium-ion batteries have come a long way since they were first commercialized almost thirty years ago. They have a longer life and a greater capacity, but the cost is 85% less than that of ten years ago.
However, safety remains a problem as lithium-ion batteries have become the cause of fires in Tesla cars, Boeing aircraft and Samsung phones.
"Only in material terms, lithium-ion batteries are the best heaters in human history," said Herry. APB batteries avoid this catastrophic situation thanks to the so-called bipolar design.
However, this technology is not without flaws, because polymers cannot conduct electricity like metals, which can greatly affect battery charge capacity, and one of the drawbacks of the dipole design is that these battery cells are connected in series, which makes it difficult to connect Each of them controls the battery cell. Respectively.
Faster that APB can't compete with the billion dollar battery giant. The company will initially focus on stationary batteries used in buildings, offices, and power plants.