Zinc Matrix batteries could change laptop game
Here’s a good little local story about Camarillo, Calif.-based battery startup Zinc Matrix Power, which has developed a silver-zinc battery technology with twice the run time of lithium-ion and a much safer operation and environmental profile. The technology apparently makes its debut at the Intel Developers Forum in San Francisco next week (Sept. 26 to 28), and manufacturer testing will be conducted next year. The company is financially backed by Intel Corp. and the U.S. Army, which obviously sees a number of military applications.
Timing couldn’t be better for this little company. Given the recent safety (fire) concerns over lithium-ion batteries, and the fact that Sony batteries used in laptops from Dell, Apple and Toshiba have been recalled by the hundreds of thousands, the search is on for a battery technology that is not only safer than lithium-ion but offers better performance as well.
UPDATE: Here’s the official release from Zinc Matrix Power from the Intel conference.
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca
September 23rd, 2006 at 12:58 am
While I saw these batteries some time ago, there are two issues of great importance that are not well called out: shelf life and cycle life. The only info I found on either of these is that the particles don’t change significantly over 100 cycles. Not very good life performance at all. Maybe if they can get up to 500 cycles and make a much cheaper product, then they may have a chance for EVs. The more I read about them, the more I think that Altair Nano may be the way to go, although there may be many ways with EEStor, Firefly, A123, and this.
September 26th, 2006 at 9:11 pm
This should be noted that Geologist Joseph Manduke -HTS(Joe) had designed and built prototype “h” cells that are going to revolutionize this issue.
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:44 am
This patent was not commercially viable at this time due to the high cost of pure unobtainium needed for the cathodic membranes.