Rarely a week passes without the report of a new battery technology, but most appear destined to remain within the lab for years. Now, though, a start-up called Sakti3 has a li-on battery that lasts twice as long as most—and $15 million of support from Dyson to make it a reality.
Sakti3's new batteries make use of a variety of new materials and processing techniques to increase their capacity, Technology Review reports. Perhaps chief amongst them is the fact that it embraces solid-state battery technology—meaning that the flammable liquid electrolyte that causes battery fires is swapped out for a solid material. In turn, that allows the company to use new high-energy storage materials that only work in a solid-state set-up. Those changes provides twice the energy density compared to normal li-on batteries.
The technology—the exact details of which remain under wraps—is compelling enough to have drawn the interest of James Dyson, who has now invested $15 million into Sakti3 to give it s final push from prototype to market. Perhaps it's the design philosophy of the company that appealed to the engineer: Sakti3 prepares its prototypes on standard manufacturing equipment instead of custom lab kit, in order to make it as easy as possible to make them commercializable in the future. Whatever the reason, Dyson claims said that "Sakti3 has achieved leaps in performance which current battery technology simply can't."
Of course, taking the technology from its existing prototype to market won't necessarily be easy, even with Dyson's support—but the partnership makes it far more likely. Perhaps your next vacuum cleaner will be powered by Sakti3. [Technology Review]
Image by Andy Armstrong under Creative Commons license