Do batteries improve?

I'm curious, do batteries improve over the years as technology can do more w/ less, will batteries be able to store more voltage, or is it already at its limit. What does 6cell, 8 cell, etc. mean. I know a bit about voltages, but not sure if batteries can improve in the future.

 

What kind of technology doesn't improve or better innovations as replacements? I just read in a Popular Science article about making more powerful/efficient electric cars. We'll have better batteries in the future. Just have to live with crappy ones of today.

 

Well, batteries are just storing units for voltage, so i'm not too sure about it. I mean a box is a box physically, and it will always store the same space. Unless technology somehow allows an object to compress/expand at will, defying laws of physics :O, I don't know how a battery might able to store more? The only thing I can see in the future is technology becomes more efficient, thus uses less power and more battery life.

 

Completely depends on the chemical reaction responsible for storing the charge. They definitely are getting better over the years.

 

Don't we still use the same batteries that we have been using over the past years? I mean AA batteries and such.

As for rechargeable batteries like nickel-based or lithium-ion, really, how long before we upgraded from nickel to lithium ion?

I'm just asking for a comparison, like cpu's and gpu's are getting ever better so quick, in a year, we have something much better. Also, like flash memory and ram... and well any other storage. We go from 1GB flash drive being 80$, now it's hardly 5$.

 

Yes, they will improve, because power consumpion is the main problem every electric device has nowadays.

The most used battery in mobile devices is the Li-Ion battery, which gets improved all the time. The capacity grows, but they also do some other enhancements. Common enhancements are Li-Polymer, Lithium-titanate, ...

They use other materials, other mixtures, nano technology or they use a completly different technology to increase capacity density, like fuel cells, bacterial batteries, other chemical reactions, atomic batteries, and so on.
The ultimate success will be to store and then use antimatter and matter to create energy.

This is one part of longer battery life.

The other part is to decrease power consumption and make the devices more efficient. This part will get its peak level when we understand superconductivity.

So I hope you see, there is much potential and there'll be always an improvement possible.

 

You are a visionary... I hope I live to see one of those two ultimate technologies realized.

 

it depends on which type of cell....newer cells are being made with higer capacities.

Nicad 1.2v/cell (recharchable nominal charge)
1.5v/cell (alkaline, non rechargable)
Nickel Metal Hydride Same voltage but higher capacity (longer lasting)

Lithium Ion/Ion Polymer 3.7v/cell (able to discharge at a continuous rate of 25 times their capacity, can deliver a lot of amperage)

Now the terms associated with batteries are not always compltely understood.


Voltage, measured in volts.................................How much power it can
deliver to the device
Capacity, measured in maH/whr..........................How long it can deliver
this power for

 

I just wish that we could at least move to Lithium-Polymer technology right now. More capacity, less weight, and smaller (and rectangle) size.

The safest tech right now for batteries is likely Li-Mn, or lithium manganese.

http://www.pfmdistribution.com/ for more info on those.

I know this since I'm into the R/C hobby. We're pushing the limits of batteries, and we see the up and coming tech pretty early.

Greg

 

pretty excited at the prospect of battery technology hitting the next big boost in longevity and storage. really helps differentiate the usefulness of a laptop over a desktop.