????未來我們能做什么：納米工程材料

????德克薩斯農工大學（A&M University）教授、美國機械工程師協會（American Society of Mechanical Engineers）能源和可持續性納米工程小組成員帕沙?穆克荷吉表示，現在還沒到放棄鋰離子電池的時候。我們可能仍會用它，但它將與我們在實驗室中獲得新能力的材料混合使用。

????納米工程師可能會對電池材料的分子結構進行深入研究，以加速電池單元電壓的產生速度，并提升其轉換效率。電解質攜帶鋰離子的方式可能會發生改變，以杜絕“交通擁堵現象”，并縮短充電時間。人們可能會設計出更薄、更強大但伸縮依然自如的電池膜，這樣，即便電池受熱膨脹，也不會爆漿。或者一心一意開發能夠比碳、空氣或任何已知材料吸附更多鋰離子的材料。

????穆克荷吉說：“我們需要詢問的最根本的問題在于，‘是否可以從頭再來？’。這就是必須解決的中尺度模型。我們是否能增加材料的寬容度，以滿足我們對于電池的訴求？”

????與此同時：著眼于長遠

????一年前，伊利諾伊理工大學的塞格雷從美國能源部獲得了340萬美元的獎金，用于開發汽車用“流體電池”。流體電池將其活性化合物儲存在外部儲罐中，然后流經電池結構內部。塞格雷的工作專注于開發具有足夠活性和能量的液體介質，以抵消液體的重量劣勢。

????流體電池或許可以應用于汽車和電網，但卻無法適用于手機或筆記本。與其他的研究人員一樣，塞格雷深知，這將是一個漫長的實驗過程，除非研究人員能夠在偶然間發現幾種能用于電池的不同材料組合。與此同時，“對于大多數人來說，這是一件尤為痛苦的事情，因為幾年過后，電量沒了，容量也下降了，然而電池供電的電子產品卻在不斷前進。”

????過去幾十年中，我們一直生活在摩爾定律（Moore's Law）當中。根據該定律，處理器中的晶體管數量每兩年會翻一番，而這也說明了技術進步的穩定性。我們目前所面臨的局勢是，晶體管尺寸已接近原子水平，芯片無法容納更多的處理器，而且我們對設備中一成不變的電池感到不滿。

????換句話來說，物理中是沒有應用程序的。金門大學（Golden Gate University）市場營銷教授米蓋爾?安?斯特拉赫維茨表示，這對于深諳技術的消費者來說可能有點難以接受，因為他們已經習慣了電子設備每一部件都會定期改良。

????斯特拉赫維茨說：“適應升級很容易，得到的升級越多，對進一步升級的期望也就越大。在這個電子產品越來越好，性能越來越高的世界中，我們覺得這是我們應享有的權利。我們會問，‘為什么電池不能變得更好呢？’”（財富中文網）

????譯者：Feng

????What we can do in the future: nano-engineer materials

????Don’t give up on lithium-ion just yet, says Partha Mukherjee, a professor at Texas A&M University and leader in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ Nanoengineering for Energy and Sustainability group. We might still be using it, but with materials that have gained some new powers in the lab.

????Nanoengineers might dig into the molecular structure of battery materials to speed up how they transfer more voltage per cell. There might be a change in the way the electrolyte conveys lithium ions so that “traffic jams” don’t occur and charging is much faster. You could design a thinner, stronger, but still flexible membrane for batteries that allows for swelling under heat but never breaks. Or go for broke and develop a material that absorbs more lithium ions than carbon, air, or any material we know.

????“The fundamental question we need to ask is, ‘How about starting from the bottom up?” Mukherjee says. “That is the mesoscale paradigm that must be addressed. Can we make materials that are more tolerant of what we need batteries to do?”

????In the meantime: get perspective

????A year ago Segre, of the Illinois Institute of Technology, received a $3.4 million prize from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a “flow battery” for car applications. Flow batteries store their active chemicals in external tanks and pass it through the battery structure itself. Segre’s work focuses on developing a liquid that is reactive and powerful enough to compensate for the liquid weight trade-off.

????A flow battery might work in cars and power grid applications, but it will never work for a phone or laptop. Segre, like most researchers, knows it will be a long series of experiments until researchers hit upon a few different material combinations for batteries. In the meantime, “It’s especially frustrating for most of us because the battery dies, the capacity drops, after a couple years, while the electronics it powers could go on and on.”

????For decades, we lived within Moore’s Law, which predicted that the number of transistors packed into a processor would double every two years, providing a steady gallop of technology improvement. We are now approaching a point at which transistors are near atomic-scale, chips can’t fit many more processors, and we’re unhappy with having the same kinds of batteries in our devices.

????In other words, when it comes to physics, there’s no app for that. Which can be a bitter pill for tech-savvy consumers to swallow as they become acclimated to regular advancements in every other part of their electronic devices, says Michal Ann Strahilevitz, a professor of marketing at Golden Gate University.

????“Adapting to upgrades is easy, and the more you are upgraded, the more you expect further upgrades,” Strahilevitz says. “In a world where [gadgets] keep getting better and more efficient, we feel we have a right to that. We ask, ‘Why can’t they be more wonderful than this?'”