"The Ultimate Limits of Intercalation Reactions

for Li-Batteries"

Over the last 40 years, lithium batteries have come from a novelty to dominating and enabling not only the power sources for portable electronics, but also those for electric vehicles and now grid storage. Without them, many of today’s electronics would not exist. They have achieved this success, whilst attaining less than 20% of their theoretical volumetric energy density. Substantial improvements are possible, and will be obtained through materials and engineering breakthroughs. However, there are ultimate limits to what intercalation-based cells can attain, around 1 kWh/liter and 350 Wh/kg at the cell level. It is unlikely that any other battery system will attain higher volumetric energy densities.