What's Preventing Us From Making A Perfect Battery?

Emerging Technologies

What's preventing us from making a perfect battery? This episode dives into the challenges faced by scientists and engineers as they work to improve battery technology. Listen now.

The cathode is the most expensive part of the battery, so research has been focused on finding cheaper materials while improving performance. Your phone’s cathode probably uses cobalt oxide, which are* great for small electronics but too volatile and expensive for use in electric cars. Tesla’s secret sauce is a cathode made of nickel, cobalt, and aluminum, which is designed to reduce costs. But for electric cars there’s a cathode that could promise more range for cheaper. It’s called the Lithium Rich NMC cathode, and as its name suggests it’s made of layers of lithium rich nickel, manganese, and cobalt oxides. The first generation of this cathode has already been used, like in the original Chevy Volt, but the second generation was projected to nearly double the battery’s capacity up to about 280 milliampere-hours per gram.