Why is battery technology stagnant? Innovative technology has yet to emerge

According to foreign media reports, when Apple redesigned the MacBook Pro in 2009, it used a new type of battery, which made the battery life 40% longer than the previous model. This laptop can last for 7 hours, enough to watch the movie "Lawrence of Arabia" twice. Apple marketing director Phil Schiller called this battery "revolutionary", but in fact it does. ?

The technological leaps that have taken place in the past 20 years are truly jaw-dropping. The computer has transformed from a utilitarian box to a rectangle with clear lines made of metal and glass, and small enough to fit in a pocket. Today's equipment is much more powerful. A new type of smart watch has more computing power than the Apollo moon landing spacecraft. However, batteries are another matter.

Even if consumer electronics manufacturers, from Apple to Samsung, have invested millions of dollars in scientific research funds in order to make devices have longer battery life, technology itself will not be able to change drastically in the next few years. But this will not slow down the rising trend of small accessories that are highly dependent on batteries.

Why battery technology stagnates has always been one of the topics discussed by researchers, and many people say that we have reached the limit of science. Regardless of the real reason, consumers will need to make every effort to efficiently use battery-powered devices.

Two evolutionary routes

In order to understand the specific situation, we must consider three questions: the past, present and future challenges faced by battery manufacturers. Michael Sinkula, co-founder and business development director of Envia, a California-based advanced battery start-up company, discovered that the energy stored in batteries in 1995 did not change significantly until 2007, more than ten years later. The energy stored by the battery has only doubled. Since then, the increase in battery energy has never exceeded 30%. Envia believes that the energy stored in most batteries may not double until 2021.

However, a standard laptop computer can run for up to 10 hours. Why? Generally speaking, technological progress stems from two separate driving forces: continuously shrinking the size of each component and continuously improving the software that manages all components. The brain of a computer is its microprocessor. The chip can perform the necessary complex calculations for drawing pictures or assisting Facebook to update the birthday status of your friends. In the past few decades, the industry has been trying to reduce the size of the processor. As they become smaller and smaller, they consume less and less energy, so the battery life becomes longer and longer.

But the battery is another matter. Essentially, they are a collection of metals and chemicals. Connecting the battery means that there will be current passing through. One of the problems faced by chemical processes is that smaller ones do not mean better ones. You can imagine it as a bottle of drink: the less beer in the glass, the less beer you can drink.

Prior to this, the main battery development stemmed from the use of new materials. When the material is converted from nickel to metallic lithium, the battery life of consumer electronic products is greatly extended. Professor John Goodenough, the father of lithium iron phosphate and an important scientist in modern battery development, said that current research is mainly focused on improving the life of lithium batteries. "The periodic table of the elements is very limited," Goodyeff said, so progress and promotion have become increasingly difficult.

Compared with the period in 1979 when Goodyeff announced that he had made breakthroughs to make modern batteries possible, there are now significantly more scientists studying battery problems. However, new materials that can be tested and studied are scarce.

The ability of a smartphone to last for a week—not just for a day—requires radically innovative technology, and such technology has not yet appeared. Goodyear believes that "the next strategy to extend battery life is currently unknown."