Scientists turn batteries into building blocks for cars and planes

By Dean Murray via SWNS

Cars and planes could soon be built from batteries, thanks to a ground-breaking innovation.

A research group at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden says they have made the world’s strongest battery that could form the structure of vehicles.

A new study details the world-leading advance in so-called massless energy storage – a structural battery that could halve the weight of a laptop, make mobile phones as thin as a credit card or increase the driving range of an electric car by up to 70 percent on a single charge.

Structural batteries are materials that, in addition to storing energy, can carry loads. Stiff, strong carbon fibers could store electrical energy chemically and, in this way, the battery material can become part of the actual construction material of a product.

The team says that when cars, planes, ships or computers are built from a material that functions as both a battery and a load-bearing structure, the weight and energy consumption are radically reduced.

"We have succeeded in creating a battery made of carbon fiber composite that is as stiff as aluminum and energy-dense enough to be used commercially. Just like a human skeleton, the battery has several functions at the same time," says Chalmers researcher Richa Chaudhary, who is the first author of a scientific article recently published in Advanced Materials .

When it comes to vehicles there are high demands on the design to be sufficiently strong to meet safety requirements. There, the research team's structural battery cell has significantly increased its stiffness, or more specifically, the elastic modulus, which is measured in gigapascal (GPa), from 25 to 70. This means that the material can carry loads just as well as aluminum but with a lower weight.

Research leader Leif Asp, professor at the Department of Industrial and Materials Science at Chalmers, says: "In terms of multifunctional properties, the new battery is twice as good as its predecessor – and actually the best ever made in the world.

"Investing in light and energy-efficient vehicles is a matter of course if we are to economize on energy and think about future generations. We have made calculations on electric cars that show that they could drive for up to 70 percent longer than today if they had competitive structural batteries.

The team said that the goal was always to achieve a performance that makes it possible to commercialize the technology. In parallel with the fact that the research is now continuing, the link to the market has been strengthened – through the newly started Chalmers Venture company Sinonus AB, based in Borås, Sweden.

However, there is still a lot of engineering work to be done before the battery cells have taken the step from lab manufacturing on a small scale to being produced on a large scale for our technology gadgets or vehicles.

Leif Asp says: "One can imagine that credit card-thin mobile phones or laptops that weigh half as much as today are the closest in time. It could also be that components such as electronics in cars or planes are powered by structural batteries.

"It will require large investments to meet the transport industry's challenging energy needs, but this is also where the technology could make the most difference."

A Chalmers University of Technology release says Leif Asp has noticed "a great deal of interest from the automotive and aerospace industries".