special shout out to omaze for sponsoring this video enter for your chance to win an amazing
tesla model s performance and 20 000 cash while helping some pretty amazing charities along the
way you probably don't think about them very often but the lithium-ion battery is at the center of so
much of our technology from ipods back in the day to laptops and smartphones they're part of
our world and they keep us connected and since they were first researched by john goodenough
stanley whittingham rashid yazami and koichi mizushuma back in the 70s and 80s to eventually
becoming commercially produced by sony in 1991 they've improved in terms of energy density how
fast they can charge and discharge how safe they are and probably most critically they've
become incredibly affordable once tesla started to build electric vehicles and built the gigafactory
the level of production around the world has gone up by such a factor that prices have come
down to a point where 300 mile range electric vehicles are completely viable but as great as
today's batteries are they're starting to hit some limitations and they're not going to be able to
get a whole lot better in terms of energy density and life cycles without a huge breakthrough and
that breakthrough is the solid state battery to understand why the solid state battery is going
to be one of the most innovative breakthroughs of the 21st century we have to talk about batteries
in general all batteries are comprised of electrodes where the actual energy is connected to
an anode in a cathode the anode is the negative terminal and the cathode is the positive and they
are separated by a separator a layer that keeps the two from contacting and short circuiting
when the battery is in use electrons break free of the lithium and transfer through the electrode and
over a cable while the now lithium ion is free to move through the separator and to allow this
transfer there has to be an electrolyte and in the case of today's batteries we have a liquid
or gel electrolyte this electrolyte allows the transfer of lithium ions through the separator
and from the anode to the cathode and vice versa but the liquid electrolyte has some
great advantages in terms of design you can wrap it tightly into a cylindrical cell like tesla does
or you can build them into pouches or prismatic cells just as easily and that liquid is really
flexible in terms of how the battery architecture is to be built the liquid electrolyte also
acts as a great contact between the anode and the cathode especially as the battery is charging and
discharging as the current is drawn from or into the battery it's going to get hot and as a result
there's going to be some thermal expansion of the different materials in the cell but the beautiful
part about the liquid electrolyte is that it's able to cope with this and allow these materials
to stay in strong contact and maintain those ion pathways to keep a healthy and sustainable battery
that sounds great but there is a problem the liquid electrolyte is really dangerous
it's highly flammable if you've ever seen a cell phone catch on fire it's probably the electrolyte
another really big issue with the liquid electrolyte is the formation of dendrites which
are whiskers that form when the lithium and the electrolyte material combine and if these whiskers
grow big enough they could potentially rupture the separator and cause a short circuit and even fires
so then the answer is solid state and as the name implies the solid state battery ditches the liquid
electrolyte in favor of a solid state electrolyte or sse before i continue i want to take a quick
moment and say thank you to our sponsor omaze a company that allows you to try your hand at
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in a world with solid state batteries we're going to have a solid electrolyte which will
act as both the separator and the electrolyte thus increasing the amount of volume available for the
actual anode and cathode the sse can actually work at higher voltages without breaking down
compared to a liquid electrolyte they're naturally flame retardant and they can operate at higher
temperatures as well and all this comes together in a battery that has the theoretical potential
of 10 times the energy density so if the tesla model 3 of today can go 300 miles
a solid state electrolyte battery tesla could go 3 000 miles rather than having to fill up
between southern and northern california i could drive to new york and not even have to fill up
so solid state electrolyte batteries are so great where are they and why aren't they already
in our devices today well the answer to that is they are very hard to manufacture currently
but at the same time they are around today actually pacemakers and other medical equipment
have solid state batteries today so in the spectrum of engineering and scientific advancement
there's usually two types of technologies on the horizon one that is just physically not possible
and the second is one that is not commercially viable so for example nuclear fusion would solve
all of our energy challenges for the rest of our time but it is physically not possible today
we just can't create the types of temperature and pressures required for nuclear effusion on
the other hand solid state batteries are actually possible today but they are incredibly expensive
and hard to manage and they are not commercially viable there's an entire scientific study around
the choice for the electrolyte material there are inorganic solid state electrolytes like
sulfides and oxides you have solid polymer electrolytes like crystalline polymers and if that
wasn't complicated enough there's even a composite class of electrolyte all these different materials
have different pros and cons some of them last longer make better contact have better ion passage
but maybe they degrade or they have other stability issues two common types of electrolyte
materials are ceramic and glass john b gudenov who was one of the fathers of lithium on battery along
with maria braga from the university of porto actually published a paper that outlines a glass
solid-state electrolyte battery and some of the preliminary results are really promising
but the challenges go beyond just the electrolyte choice because there's actually a challenge and a
huge hurdle at every single interface first and foremost you have to have ions be able
to transfer through the cathode material then through and to the surface of that material
and then there is the interface between the cathode and the electrolyte that interface is
also tricky and then the ion has to pass through the electrolyte and then to the interface between
the electrolyte and the anode and then through the anode in nature interfaces like this like hard
changes in material hard changes and temperature pressure aren't really common and they're not
easy to overcome what's much more easy to handle is a gradual change so that's where
these interfaces are very tricky and there's some interesting ways to solve it for example if you
were to inject some of the electrolyte material into the cathode especially near the interface and
slowly phase it out further out then you'd allow the material to have a more gradual step from
cathode to electrolyte and the same would be true from the anode perspective where you could inject
the electrolyte material into the anode allowing for a more gradual pathway instead of hard breaks
in the material interfaces but these interfaces are all very difficult if i haven't convinced
you of just how complicated these are yet let's just talk about the cathode interfacial reaction
so there's an innate chemical reactivity between the high voltage cathodes and the sses
that result in the formation of transitional metals and oxides and other undesirable products
on the cathode sse interface increasing cell polarization and limiting rate capability sounds
complicated right yeah and it is and the answers to this are to combat it with various layers
and coatings that would help to alleviate this for example a 20 nanometer layer thick lto lithium
titanate oxide coating could reduce cathode interfacial resistance by an order of magnitude
but that has its own challenges and it goes on and on and there are hundreds if not thousands
of universities and companies around the world trying to solve this problem because a world
with solid state electrolyte batteries is going to be game changing especially for transportation
you can imagine every car suddenly being able to go thousands of miles with
a very small and lightweight battery pack would open the doors to a whole new class of evs
small runabouts around town little hatchbacks two doors cheap economic affordable cars airplanes
imagine if you could take a transatlantic flight with two 300 passengers and fly 2 000 miles on
batteries those are the kinds of things that would be possible if we could move from a liquid to a
solid state electrolyte so at this point in the video you're probably thinking how far out are
they are they going to be coming out next year five years 10 years 50 years 100 years well to
that there is some good news toyota was actually planning to unveil a solid-state electrolyte
battery vehicle at the 2020 tokyo olympic games but with what's happening around the world right
now and that being cancelled it's hard to know if they're still gonna have some sort of event
to unveil the automobile but this would be huge news from a company like toyota who used to be
the world's biggest car manufacturer who has shown no interest in making electric vehicles
and it's not just toyota hyundai is working with ionic materials on solid-state batteries
volkswagen recently increased its stake in quantum scape a developer of solid state batteries
and mercedes-benz even showed off their avatar concept car with a solid-state battery at a car
show last year so we have seen this before but that still doesn't answer the question of how far
out are they from a commercial perspective because toyota i can assure you is not going to have
a mass-produced solid state electrolyte battery vehicle next year it might actually not even be
for about five years but with tesla becoming the largest automaker by market capitalization
there's going to be a huge increasing necessity and demand for battery research and technology
and you can be assured that companies will rise to meet that demand that's just how the markets work
while solid state batteries are not going to be ready this year or next year i think five years is
a pretty realistic timetable especially with the level of innovation and research that's happening
remember that we have this this isn't some pie in the sky idea we have solid state batteries today
the question now is can we make them reliable charge over and over allow for good contact at the
interfaces and work for thousands of cycles and be safe while they do it and that's the question that
every automaker might be toying with if you're tesla you have no other cars that you've ever made
so for you the question is simple take today's battery technology and build cars and they've
done just that but if you're toyota are you just waiting for a world where solid-state batteries
are available before you build evs is that what they're waiting for it could be and maybe other
companies are following suit too because remember when we do have solid state batteries companies
that are full speed ahead on current tech are gonna have to retool and completely change their
manufacturing process in order to accommodate the new materials and processes required so if
you're trying to maybe you're thinking we make gas cars today and we'll keep doing that until a world
where solid state batteries are online and we'll switch then and let's hope that that's what they
are planning to do and that when this does happen that they will build electric vehicles at large
but one thing is for sure tesla's not going to wait and neither should you today's batteries are
safe and reliable and long lasting the electric vehicles of today can last 300 000 miles their
drive trains and motors maybe even a million miles but the point is you could always wait for
the next thing and if you're thinking i'm going to wait until solid state battery before i buy an ev
all right that's your call but i would say there's no harm in buying a car that has batteries today
and in five or eight years when it's time for your next car you would upgrade then
and most likely there's gonna be a slew of options that have solid state batteries in them
and so in closing that's what makes the story of the solid state battery
bittersweet the engineering and science is incredibly complicated but incredibly
fulfilling and i bet you the guy or girl who figures this out and wins a nobel prize is
going to be remembered for the rest of their lives as a person who brought us solid state batteries
but the solid state battery is also used as a pr move by companies to show people hey we're cool
we're doing great cutting-edge research whether or not they actually are so it's hard to know how
many of these companies are really serious about battery technology and innovation and how many
are just trying to grab headlines remember when kodak introduced a blockchain for some reason
and most believed it was just a ploy to drive their stock price which it did for a short period
of time so the solstice battery can be used in a similar way to kind of drive enthusiasm and
excitement whether or not you actually have any plan of actually delivering but i'm increasingly
optimistic because i think the person who solves this is going to be in for a huge windfall and
that batteries are going to be the backbone of the entire transportation sector in the next 50 years
thank you so much for watching i toyed with the idea of making this really involved and scientific
and keeping it topical and i'm still not sure how i landed on this one let me know in the comments
if you like this video if you want to get more in depth or less in depth i think our viewership is
pretty broad and there's probably a little bit of both but this is a fascinating topic i love solid
state batteries i'm really bullish on them i think they're gonna be a huge game changer and i think
most people put it between five and ten years out and i'm actually on the five year side i think in
five years we'll have them so i have an electric vehicle today and i'm pretty confident my next one
will have solid date batteries in it thank you so much for watching if you're new hit that subscribe
button and the bell icon so you don't miss our future videos hit like and share this video
with anybody you think might enjoy it i'm ricky with tuba davinci thank you so much for watching