Researchers at the University of Maryland have invented a single tiny structure that includes all the components of a battery that they say could bring about the ultimate miniaturization of energy storage components.
After decades of repeated reinvention, the silicon transistor is starting to show its age, and the industry is hunting for alternatives. One option involves a new way of manipulating the properties of a material that the computer industry already uses. If it works, it would lead to computer processors that are not only more energy-efficient but also capable of both computation and memory storage at once.
StoreDot, a company that uses bio-organic technology to make ultrafast charging batteries, has just raised $42 million in new funding.
StoreDot has discovered self-assembling nanodots from organic materials that can be used to make a new kind of batteries. The company first showed off its prototype last April, and will now use the new funding to further refine and commercialize its battery technology, beef up its teams, and begin developing new products in its new research facility in Herzliya, Israel.
StoreDot’s technology could also help improve current smartphone and TV display technologies, flash memory, bio-LEDs, bio-lasers, drug delivery, food security, and bio labeling, among other things.
Ask an engineer why we power our cars with gasoline rather than electric batteries and you’ll get a geeky answer: energy density. Said another way, gasoline holds far more energy in a given space than any battery ever has.
Traditionally, batteries have had few uses in commercial buildings. But a handful of companies are reinventing batteries, making them connected devices that can cut utility bills without an upfront investment.
Santa Clara, CA-based Green Charge Networks said Tuesday it has raised $56 million from K Road DG, a private equity firm focused on distributed energy, to scale up its business. The company intends to expand from operations in New York and California into Texas and Hawaii, a company representative says.
A California startup is developing flexible, rechargeable batteries that can be printed cheaply on commonly used industrial screen printers. Imprint Energy, of Alameda, California, has been testing its ultrathin zinc-polymer batteries in wrist-worn devices and hopes to sell them to manufacturers of wearable electronics, medical devices, smart labels, and environmental sensors.
Consumer device makers have squeezed about all the capacity they’re going to get out of lithium ion technology. Problem is, the next generation in device battery tech remains in the nascent stages of development. So while poor battery life remains a key pain point in using today’s phones and tablets, new and promising battery technology deserves attention.
In the search for better electric-car batteries, lots of lab research has to happen before anything can be announced.
Today, a company called Power Japan Plus came out of stealth mode to unveil a new battery chemistry, with both electrodes–anode and cathode–made of carbon.
The new cell, known as the Ryden Dual-Carbon Battery, promises energy density equal to today’s lithium-ion cells, but with less capacity loss over time and far greater safety.
Progress being made by battery startup Ambri suggests that the market for long-duration grid energy storage is finally taking shape. Storing wind and solar power using today’s battery technologies is too expensive, but new technologies could make it affordable, enabling wider use of renewables.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts, company this week said it has raised a $35 million series-C round to fund the production of prototype batteries from an existing factory and finance construction of a commercial-scale plant. The company intends to test prototypes in the field this year and produce full-size batteries for paying customers by 2016.
Bio-organic system, which uses peptide compounds to boost the charge, expected on market in 2016An Israeli start-up said on Tuesday that it was working to develop a bio-organic system that can recharge a smartphone battery in just 30 seconds.
Tel Aviv-based StoreDot’s prototype battery and charger is currently being tested with Samsung’s Galaxy phones, but the start-up’s founder and CEO Doron Myersdorf told AFP that a product compatible with all makes of smartphone should be on the market by 2016.
