According to the Prime Minister, the UK is ‘leading the way’ on battery technology, although there doesn’t seem to be a lot of evidence to support that particular claim. However, battery technology offers huge potential, not only for electric vehicles – which seem to be the focus of the Prime Minister’s assertion – but also for all other kinds of application.
Amazingly, there are 110million possible combinations of materials that could be used to create a battery, but only 30 or so of these have been put to practical use.
One of the problems is that, in the past, testing needed to be done physically. Today, these combinations can be examined using simulation and if they look promising, they can be pursued. Southampton based Ilika is one company using this approach, claiming it can characterise and test these combinations up to 100 times more quickly. Using that approach, it has developed a micro solid state battery technology targeted at IoT applications.
Building batteries that are smaller, provide more power and last longer between charges really could be the ‘better mousetrap’ that everybody talks about.
