Three technologies to watch in 2011: silicon anodes, ambient energy harvesting, and very low power wireless
If there is a Cinderella in the battery world, it is the lithium ion anode.
No glamorous metal oxides to develop, nor cunning structures to optimise, just gradual developments in two sorts of carbon.
However, 2011 looks like it might just be the year when the fairy godmother turns up and anodes go silicon.
It has long been known that silicon can absorb nearly 10 times as much lithium as carbon, but this has not been much use because the silicon swells so much that the electrode falls to pieces.
However, Oxfordshire-based Nexeon has quietly been working on a Nanostructured form of silicon that can repeatedly cope with plenty of lithium, and can be made in bulk.
Just before Christmas, Nexeon revealed a prototype silicon anode 18650-size cell that it claimed not only exceeded the capacity of commercial cells (at 3.2Ah with C/3 discharge), but beat them on cycle life as well.
It predicts 4Ah cells later this year.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the US also recently described robust silicon anodes, proving that there are at least two ways to make them - although Rensselaer's technique does not look like it will scale to mass production in the near future.
So keep an eye open for licensing activity amongst cell makers, unless some other disadvantage of silicon appears.
Not straying from power, also expect ambient energy harvesting activity - and not just using photo cells.
Thanks to Linear Technology's innovative LTC3108 and 09 self-oscillating boost converters, which will start-up from inputs of a few millivolts and deliver several volts, the tyranny of the 0.6V diode drop has been eliminated and tiny electromagnetic vibration harvesters have become far more practical, as have thermoelectric power sources - whose outputs are generally measured in mV.
As it happens, last year Nextreme introduced a thermoelectric generator - HV37 - which produces hundreds of mV and tens of mW, and might just appear in commercial designs in 2011.
What would be nice for vibration harvesters, and would possibly constitute a miracle, would be finding a way to spread the operating frequency band, or tune it on-the-fly. I wouldn't hold your breath.
Meeting energy harvesters coming the other way comes the third technology to watch: very low power wireless technologies.
Encoding schemes and protocols that have been developed specifically to minimise Joules/bit have helped a great deal here.
ULP Bluetooth is some way there, but particularly for low bit rates from energy-scavenged wireless nodes - for sensing temperature or pH perhaps - await more developments.
Medical monitoring is likely to be a driver for such nodes.
Even in 2004, Belgian research lab IMEC was sending personal medical data across a body area network for 0.5nJ/bit, and this year it showed a descendent of that technology sending ECG data to an Android phone.
And it is worth noting, it was using body temperature thermoelectrics to power some of its demonstrations.
A bonus for 2011 would be a mid-range car with LED headlights.
In May 2009, Hella predicted this before November 2010, and it didn't seem to happen just yet, so perhaps 2011 will be the year. 