Nanobatteries and Moore’s Law

A company that makes DSL broadband equipment, mPhase Technologies, based in Little Falls, NJ, has been touting its new nanotech-based battery with a flurry of press releases and, most recently, a video on YouTube.

The video begins with a voice-over complaining, rightly enough, that although the cost and performance of computer chips have been increasing and improving, respectively, very quickly, following Moore’s Law–that the number of transistors on a chip will double every couple of years–batteries haven’t been keeping up. So is the company’s new tech the battery world’s answer to Moore’s Law?

Unfortunately, the company’s battery doesn’t seem to be the breakthrough that cell-phone users and electric-car enthusiasts have been looking for. Although mPhase is marketing the battery as a long-awaited revolution in battery design, the company isn’t touting doubled energy capacity or tripled power output. And it’s not trumpeting slashed prices or even long calendar life, both important features if electric cars are ever going to dominate the roads.

What’s exciting here, apparently, is that the battery can sit unused on the shelf for decades and, after that, work just like new. This is accomplished by keeping the electrolyte out of contact with the battery’s electrodes until the moment power is needed. The nanotechnology involved is a pattern of nanorods that keep the electrolyte suspended above the electrode materials until a voltage is applied.

The battery could very well be an excellent advance–but for some pretty specific applications, such as active RFID tags and smart munitions, which might sit for months or years in warehouses and bunkers before being used.

Meanwhile, advances in energy capacity and calendar life are coming from improvements in electrode materials, sometimes using nanoscale particles. (See “3M’s Higher-Capacity Lithium-Ion Batteries,” “Powering GM’s Electric Vehicles,” and “Battery Breakthrough?”) These might lead to a doubling of energy capacity within a decade, which could go far toward improving electronic devices and cars. Battery performance could double in the next 10 years, according to one MIT scientist. (See “How Future Batteries Will Be Longer-Lasting and Safer.”) That’s no Moore’s Law, but, combined with more-efficient devices, it could make a big difference.