In the words of scientists, battery technology can be said to be a kind of "art of chaos." The reason why it develops so slowly is largely because almost every little progress or change requires a lot of experimentation and testing to ensure safety and stability. Even if you find a material that is very helpful for increasing energy density, you can't guarantee that it will really work.

　　Of course, no matter how these things change, there are some constants that we seem to have become accustomed to, and that is battery technology. The performance continues to increase, the resolution continues to improve, and the pictures are getting better and better, but the battery life is definitely not a big breakthrough.

　　Of course, we have a way to improve the battery life of the mobile phone, as long as the battery is made bigger, but this is only the crudest way, the mobile phone is so big after all. Almost all technical research can be solved by spending money and time. Is battery technology so important that it is not worth the investment of major manufacturers?

　　The solution sounds simple, but it is not. Investing a lot of money, hiring the best scientists, and having enough patience are not the key to solving the problem. The problem is that creating a battery with a higher energy density will involve a whole new scientific field.

　　In this regard, Billy Wu, a professor at Imperial College London’s Dyson School of Engineering, explained that Moore’s Law simply means that transistors will become smaller every few years, allowing the chip to accommodate more, thereby increasing processing power.

　　This is not the case in the battery field. "In the field of microprocessors, everything is just to make things smaller. But when it comes to lithium-ion batteries, if you want to increase energy density, in other words, increase the battery life of mobile phones, then you must fundamentally To change the materials in the battery."

　　This of course will not be as simple as "then change the material", because the balance of the internal material composition may cause serious problems even if it is not right.

　　There are so many accidents now, which remind us how serious the accident will be. Professor Wu said that the current combination of nickel, cobalt, and manganese may change in the next few years. Because nickel is more active, its proportion will be increased, thereby increasing power.

　　Of course, but this change still requires several years of testing to ensure everything is stable and safe. It is said that if successful, battery life can be increased by 10% to 20%. However, people have waited for so many years, and the improvements they have waited do not seem to match the time. The real breakthrough in battery technology seems to be people chasing an impossible dream.

　　Difficulties

　　In the words of scientists, battery technology can be said to be a kind of "art of chaos." The reason why it develops so slowly is largely because almost every little progress or change requires a lot of experimentation and testing to ensure safety and stability. Even if you find a material that is very helpful for increasing energy density, you can't guarantee that it will really work.

　　For example, it has recently been discovered that silica gel seems to be a better material than graphite in batteries. Its energy density is ten times that of graphite, which means that if our mobile phones can last one day, the silicone battery can last ten days. The problem is that such a battery becomes a very dangerous explosive.　　 Why is this? When the battery is charged and discharged, graphite will expand and contract by about 10%. We can deal with 10%, but silica gel can reach 300% on this. You don't need to think too much about how dangerous this battery is.

　　It is precisely because of this that the investment in battery technology research can be said to be an invisible black hole. Therefore, although there are many scientists, companies and research institutions in the world who are persistently tackling key problems, the lack of prospects makes these efforts always Fighting separately does not form an industry-wide cooperation.

　　More importantly, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 series of events shocked the entire industry, which also made people become more cautious in their research and pay more attention to each step of the test. According to industry insiders, many manufacturers have begun to have a fluke and want to force the growth of battery energy density. The battery incident is a wake-up call, forcing everyone to slow down-of course, paying attention to safety is definitely a good thing.

　　Can we see progress?

　　So the question is: Since the progress of the breakthrough has been so slow, when will we see the progress? Interestingly, the answer is a long time later, but it does not seem to be that long.

　　"It takes about 10 years to develop a new chemical process, with an investment of 100 million pounds, so it can't compare with the microprocessor field in terms of economic scale." Professor Wu said.

　　Moreover, 10 years is only the first stage. It will take another 10 years to continuously test and improve the new technology to ensure that the new technology is sufficiently safe and stable, otherwise it cannot be applied to commercialization. The simplest example, research results related to lithium-ion batteries were first published in Oxford University in 1980. It was not until the 1990s that Sony commercialized this technology for the first time.

　　"We already have another chemical solution, but it will take some time to come. People have been talking about sulfur or silica gel as new materials for batteries. In addition, there is now a kind of lithium-air battery that may be the ultimate solution. The plan. However, it will take one or two more than 10 years before it is perfect." Professor Wu said.

　　10 or even 20 years is terrible for everyone, but after hearing the desperate situation before, it seems that it is not that long. More importantly, manufacturers have taken a different approach, and piecemeal progress and optimization will certainly be possible.

　　Although battery technology cannot be broken in a short time, other technologies cannot fail to improve after all. As the performance of mobile phones continues to increase, and the resolution even reaches the 4K level, these have put forward demanding requirements for energy consumption optimization.

　　In this regard, the 10-nanometer process and even the 7-nanometer process are already on the agenda. OLED screens can effectively reduce energy consumption. Optimization on various software levels has also become a compulsory course.