As consumers embrace electric vehicles (EVs) in increasing numbers and automakers transform production, demand for the lithium used in EV batteries is expected to outstrip supply for years to come. 

Learn why lithium has earned its position as a critical mineral, and may be an investment opportunity, in our newest educational video. 

Please contact the Sprott Team at 888.622.1813 for more information or answers to your questions. You can also email us at invest@sprott.com

Defense Metals is an advanced mineral exploration company with an Indicated Mineral Resource of 5 million tons averaging 2.95% TREO (Total Rare Earth Oxide), and an Inferred Mineral Resource of 29.5 million tonnes averaging 1.83% TREO.

Learn more: https://defensemetals.com/

Nano One's patented One-Pot and M2CAM (Metal direct to Cathode Active Materials) technologies reduce complexity, cost, and environmental footprint in the lithium-ion battery cathode supply chain. Applies to Niobium Coated Single Crystal Cathodes like NMC, LNMO, LFP, and more. Nano One is changing how the world makes battery materials while transforming the supply chain to a cleaner more sustainable approach.

UPDATED: The advantages of Nano One's One Pot Process on performance and cost. 2 minute video explaining how Nano One's Coated Single Crystal Cathode materials differ from conventional cathode materials using coating materials like Niobium.

Click the link to read the full News Release:
https://nanoone.ca/news/news-releases/nano-one-and-rio-tinto-announce-strategic-partnership-and-us-10m-investment/ 

#batteries #minestomobility #cathodes #supplychain #evs #batterymaterials $NANO

Read more about the trip mandate: https://www.canada.ca/en/innovation-science-economic-development/news/2022/11/minister-champagne-travelling-to-japan-and-south-korea.html

Why Metallic Hydrogen is so important! [2020]

A Nature article published January 29, 2020 by French scientist Paul Loubeyre, claiming to have finally created metallic hydrogen is an important milestone for pressure physics research.

Metallic hydrogen was first theorized back in 1935, by Eugene Wigner and Dr. Hillard Bell Huntington.

Wigner and Huntington based their idea on what is called Bravais Lattice (Bráveis Láttice) which is, an infinite array of discrete points generated by a set of discrete translation. Basically, it is a pattern that repeats itself throughout a structure, like graphene for instance.
They thought that this was true for any element including hydrogen and went on to calculate how this could happen. They concluded, based on a lot of calculation that hydrogen would assume a Bravais Lattice at around 25 GPa. Fast forward to today and that number may be closer to 425 GPa.

Scientists have given 85 years to the research of this topic but Why MH is so important?

Sources
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/9569212/Silvera_Metallic.pdf
http://people.physics.illinois.edu/ceperley/papers/229.pdf
https://www.nature.com/articles/nphys625.pdf
https://journals.aps.org/pr/pdf/10.1103/PhysRev.108.1175
https://phys.org/news/2020-04-scientists-superconducting-metal-hydrides.html
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02811-1
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1927-3
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/molecule-of-the-week/archive/l/lanthanum-decahydride.html

Batteries are everywhere in today’s hyperconnected electrically propelled society. What if your electric car could travel 1000 miles on a single charge, charge in 10 minutes, and last for 1 million miles?

Today just about every electric car uses lithium ion batteries. They’re pretty good, but ultimately are heavy and have long charging times for the amount of energy they can store.

According to Elon Musk, battery modules are the main limiting factor in electric vehicle life. In 2019 he said the Tesla Model 3 drive unit is rated for 1 million miles, but the battery isn’t as long lasting.

To handle the predicted demand explosion for electric vehicles over the coming decades, we’ll need to create a breakthrough battery that is cheaper, longer lasting, more durable, and more efficient. We must also address the issues of political and environmental sustainability to ensure batteries remain tenable in an increasingly electric future.

Over 80% of world’s lithium deposits are found in China, and current technology also relies heavily on cobalt, an element mostly found in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

After Tesla’s recent battery day, where Elon Musk announced a larger, tabless 4680 battery cell with improved energy density, greater ease of manufacturing, and lower cost. The world’s attention is now more focused on batteries than ever before, but Tesla isn’t the only show in town.

Lithium air batteries. Metal air batteries have been around for a while. You might find a little zinc air button cell in a hearing aid, for example, but scaled up aluminum and lithium air chemistries are also promising for the automotive and aerospace industries. The potential for lightweight batteries with high energy storage makes this battery technology promising. Lithium air batteries could have a maximum theoretical specific energy of 3,460 W h/kg , almost 10 times more than lithium ion. NASA researchers have also been investigating lithium air batteries for use in aircraft. This technology still has a long way to go before your take your next business trip is in an electric plane.

Nanotech Batteries. Nanotechnology has been a buzzword for several decades, but is now finding applications in everything from nanoelectronics to biomedical engineering, and body armor to extra-slippery clothing irons. Nanomaterials make use of particles and structures 1-100 nanometers in size, essentially one size up from the molecular scale. Carbon nanostructures also show great promise. Graphene is one of the most exciting of these. Amprius go one stage further with their anodes of ‘100% silicon nanowire’. The maker claims that they can achieve 500 Wh/kg which is in the range suitable for enabling electric aircraft in partnership with Airbus. Nanomaterial research is promising

Lithium sulphur batteries are one emerging technology that can offer greatly improved energy densities compared to lithium-ion. The theoretical maximum specific energy of this chemistry is 2,567 Wh/kg compared to lithium ion’s 350 Wh/kg maximum.

Solid state electrolytes. A common theme in emerging technologies so far has been researchers’ desire to develop solid state electrolytes. These would replace flammable organic liquids with stable, crystalline or glassy-state solids, or polymer-base. It is hoped that using these solid electrolytes would enable the use of metallic lithium electrodes to provide higher output voltages and allow for increased energy density. Panasonic have also been looking into solid state electrolytes. It is notable that Tesla have been partnered with Panasonic in their existing lithium-ion manufacturing capacity, but it is Toyota who have publicly announced their collaboration with Panasonic to develop next generation solid state batteries.
Samsung too are working on solid state batteries.

Dual carbon batteries. Two carbon electrodes and a non-toxic electrolyte with the ability to extract more power than from conventional lithium ion, and their ability to charge 20 times faster, and these lithium-ion variants could be the future for electric vehicles.

Better batteries are also important for the advancement of stationary storage from renewable energy sources such as solar power. Tesla is also making headway into this sector, with products like the powerwall home battery, and powerpack commercial energy storage products.

The technologies discussed in this video could have huge implications on different battery powered transportation options besides just electric cars. Imagine the potential in everything from electric bikes to electric scooters and electric boats to electric airplanes. Consumer electronics also stand to experience vast improvements in battery life in devices such as smart phones, laptops, cameras, and more. The future is electric!

Critics say the state's dependence on solar and wind have made the power grid unreliable and overly expensive.

California's rolling blackouts this summer were caused by decades of costly and poorly planned decisions to replace coal, nuclear, and gas-powered plants with solar and wind, according to some energy experts.

"It speaks to the delusion of California policymakers," says Michael Shellenberger, the president of Environmental Progress, which advocates for greater reliance on nuclear power as a way to reduce CO2 emissions and provide reliable energy. "They really convinced themselves that they could manage all of this increased demand on renewables, which are fundamentally unreliable." 

Reason.com is the planet's leading source of news, politics, and culture from a libertarian perspective. 

Exploring solar panel efficiency breakthroughs in 2020. The past year has had some really interesting advancements with perovskite and multijunction solar cells, which are going to have a big impact. Plus, what if I told you it might be possible to harvest power from shadows?

The metal lithium has become integral to our daily lives, due to its essential role as a battery material in electronic devices. Over the next several decades, the rising popularity of electric vehicles is expected to mean the demand for lithium will increase even more -- so companies that mine the metal are racing to improve their productivity. Science correspondent Miles O’Brien reports.

The Tesla 2170 Lithium-Ion battery cell and other high capacity lithium-ion battery cell technologies all represent the first hopeful steps in transitioning society towards a new standard in practical and economical transportation via electric vehicles.

HOW BATTERIES WORK

The modern incarnation of the electrochemical battery is credited to the Italian scientist Alessandro Volta, who put together the first battery in response to the misguided findings of his colleague, Luigi Galvani. Volta suspected that the electric current came from the two dissimilar metals and it was being transmitted through the frogs’ tissues, not originating from it. Volta had developed the first electrochemical battery, known as a voltaic pile.

Individual cells can be combined into configurations that can both increase the total voltage and current capacity. This is known as a battery. On primary batteries, the electrodes become depleted as they release their positive or negative ions into the electrolyte, or the build-up of reaction products on the electrodes prevents the reaction from continuing. This results in a one-time use battery.

In secondary batteries, the chemical reaction that occurred during discharge can be reversed.

FIRST RECHARGEABLE BATTERY

In 1859, the French physicist Gaston Planté would invent the lead-acid battery, the first-ever battery that could be recharged. By the 1880s, the lead-acid battery would take on a more practical form with each cell consisting of interlaced plates of lead and lead dioxide.

In the early 1900s, the electric vehicle began to grow in popularity in the United States, after thriving in Europe for over 15 years. Within a few years, most electric vehicle manufacturers had ceased production.

NiMH

In the late 1960s, research had begun by the global communications company COMSAT, on a relatively new battery chemistry called nickel-hydrogen. Designed specifically for use on satellites, probes, and other space vehicles, these batteries used hydrogen stored at up to 82 bar with a nickel oxide hydroxide cathode and a platinum-based catalyst anode that behaved similarly to a hydrogen fuel cell. The pressure of hydrogen would decrease as the cell is depleted offering a reliable indicator of the batteries charge.

Though nickel-hydrogen batteries offered only a slightly better energy storage capacity than lead-acid batteries, their service life exceeded 15 years and they had a cycle durability exceeding 20,000 charge/recharge cycles. By the early 1980s their use on space vehicles became common. Over the next two decades research into nickel-metal hydride cell technology was supported heavily by both Daimler-Benz and by Volkswagen AG resulting in the first generation of batteries achieving storage capacities similar to nickel-hydrogen, though with a 5 fold increase in specific power. This breakthrough led to the first consumer-grade nickel-metal hydride batteries to become commercially available in 1989.

REVIVAL OF ELECTRIC CARS

Almost 100 years after the first golden age of electric vehicles, a confluence of several factors reignited interest in electric vehicles once again. This initiative intersected with the recent refinement of nickel-metal hydride battery technology, making practical electrical vehicles a viable commercial option to pursue. By the late 1990s, mass-market electric vehicle production had started once again. Taking a more risk-averse approach, many automakers started to develop all-electric models based on existing platforms in their model line up.

MODERN ELECTRIC CARS

Despite lithium-ion batteries becoming a viable option for electric vehicles, the second half of the 1990s into the mid-2000s were primarily dominated by the more risk-averse technology of hybrid-powered vehicles. And even these successful early models such as the Toyota Prius were generally still powered by Nickel-metal hydride battery technology.

At the time lithium-ion batteries were still relatively unproven for vehicle use and also cost more per kWh. Around 2010, The cathode material of lithium-ion cells would once evolve with the advent of lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide cathodes or NMC. Curiously, Tesla is known for being the only manufacturer who does not use NMC cell technology but rather much older lithium nickel cobalt aluminum oxide cathode, or NCA.

COBALT

With the surge in consumer adoption of electric vehicles, comes a rise in the demand for the lithium-ion batteries that power them. While roughly half of the cobalt produced is currently used for batteries, the metal also has important uses in electronics, tooling, and superalloys like those used in jet turbines. More than half of the world’s cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. With no state regulation, cobalt mining in the region is also plagued with exploitative practices.

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