Breakthroughs can start from simple curiosities.
Breakthroughs can start from simple curiosities. An exciting battery breakthrough at the University of California San Diego, for example, started when a graduate student wondered about those little cans of compressed air that are used for dusting off keyboards. But these kinds of initial ideas have little chance of becoming gamechangers without a university ecosystem that offers support, resources and freedom to explore. Thankfully, with such agency, the compressed-air curiosity turned into a promising new battery technology that could expand battery performance, safety and versatility. Here is a bit of that story. It starts with some battery context.
Our current battery industry needs to be reenergized. The decades-old technology isn’t always the ideal match for some of our recent advancements, like electric vehicles, or for more extreme environments. Fortunately, some companies are charging up potentially ground-breaking ideas.
One such company is the startup South 8 Technologies, a company led and co-founded by alumni from UC San Diego. South 8’s claim to fame is a patented Liquefied Gas Electrolyte (LiGasⓇ) technology, which was named one of TIME’s 200 best inventions of 2024. By replacing the liquid electrolytes in conventional lithium-ion batteries with liquefied gases, South 8 batteries have a world record wide temperature range for their performance: -60 degrees Celsius to +60 degrees Celsius (in comparison, conventional lithium batteries only perform down to 0 or -10 degrees Celsius). Plus, they store more energy per cell and are safer.
Read more at: University of California San Diego
Employees at South 8 Technologies are creating batteries that use liquefied gases instead of liquid electrolytes, which expands their performance temperature range. (Photo Credit: South 8 Technologies)
