MIT, Contour Energy relationship gives cell-sized batteries another boost

I have been chronicling the progress of Contour Energy, which has come up with a way to squeeze more power out of familiar battery formats. Well, at least familiar battery sizes, notably coin cells. Now, the company is licensing some additional intellectual property from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under an exclusive arrangement.

Without getting too technical, Contour Energy and MIT are working with MIT's breakthrough carbon nanotube technology. If what they are working on works as the two hope, the technology will produce a tenfold increase in the amount of power that can be delivered with a coin cell format battery, when compared with a conventional lithium-ion battery. The other key is that the battery will continue to hold this performance over time, across literally thousands of charge-discharges. The performance of current materials tends to degrade over time. I won't get into the nitty-gritty of the design, but here is the general idea, as explained by Professor Shao-Horn at MIT's Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering department:

"These carbon nanotubes contain numerous functional groups on their surfaces that can store a large number of lithium ions per unit mass. ... For the first time, carbon nanotubes can serve as the cathode in lithium-ion batteries, instead of the traditional role that carbon materials have played as the anode in such systems. This lithium storage reaction on the surface of carbon nanotubes is much faster than conventional lithium intercalation reactions, so can deliver high power."

The reason that that stuff has my attention is that so many sensors and miniature devices are being added to the "network" that I can see all sorts of uses for it. You can expect to see Contour Energy use the technology in its batteries intended for portable applications for automotive, military, industrial, medical and other uses.