{"id":6823,"date":"2015-11-27T08:11:46","date_gmt":"2015-11-27T08:11:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=6823"},"modified":"2015-11-27T08:11:46","modified_gmt":"2015-11-27T08:11:46","slug":"ntu-smart-chip-detecting-health-of-your-mobile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/ntu-smart-chip-detecting-health-of-your-mobile\/","title":{"rendered":"NTU smart chip detecting health of your mobile"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scientists from Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore) have developed a smart chip which can tell you how healthy is your battery and if it is safe for use.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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\"NTU<\/a>
NTU Prof Rachid Yazami (left) holding his smart battery chip with research fellow Sohaib El Outmani holding a prototype testing device.
Copyright : NTU<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Singapore<\/strong>—<\/span>Scientists from Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore) have developed a smart chip which can tell you how healthy is your battery and if it is safe for use.<\/span><\/span>

If the battery in your smartphone or electric vehicle is faulty and is at risk of catching fire, this smart chip will warn you. Current warning systems only alert users when the battery is already overheating which may be too late for any remedial action.<\/span>

Developed by Professor Rachid Yazami of the Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N), this smart chip is small enough to be embedded in almost all batteries, from the small batteries in mobile devices to the huge power packs found in electric vehicles and advanced aeroplanes.<\/span>

A pioneer in battery research, Prof Yazami won the 2014 Draper Prize for Engineering awarded by the Washington-based National Academy of Engineering for being one of the three founders of lithium-ion battery. The prestigious award recognised his discovery in the 1980s in making lithium-ion batteries safely rechargeable, paving the way for its universal use today.<\/span>

<\/p>\n

[pullquote]It is expected that the technology will be made available for licensing by chipmakers and battery manufacturers before the end of 2016.[\/pullquote]<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough the risk of a battery failing and catching fire is very low, with the billions of lithium-ion batteries being produced yearly, even a one-in-a-million chance would mean over a thousand failures,\u201d explained Prof Yazami, who holds more than 50 patents and has authored more than 200 scientific papers, book chapters and reports on batteries.<\/span>

\u201cThis poses a serious risk for electric vehicles and even in advanced aeroplanes as usually big battery packs have hundreds of cells or more bundled together to power the vehicle or aircraft. If there is a chemical fire caused by a single failed battery, it could cause fires in nearby batteries, leading to an explosion.\u201d<\/span>

Patented technology<\/span>

Embedded in the smart chip is a proprietary algorithm developed by Prof Yazami that is based on electrochemical thermodynamics measurements (ETM technology).<\/span>

Current lithium-ion batteries have a chip in them which only shows voltage and temperature readings. Today\u2019s battery chips are unable to detect symptoms of a malfunction and can also show only the estimated amount of charge the battery is holding.<\/span>

In comparison, Prof Yazami\u2019s patented algorithm is able to analyse both the state of health and the state of charge through a 3-dimensional chart. On a monitor screen, it looks similar to a ski route down a mountain.<\/span>

Drawing on the analogy of a fingerprint, he said: \u201cThe \u2018ski route\u2019 of a brand new battery looks different from those of a degraded or faulty battery \u2013 just like how two fingerprints will look quite different.\u201d<\/span>

\u201cIn addition to knowing the degradation of batteries, our technology can also tell the exact state of charge of the battery, and thus optimise the charging so the battery can be maintained in its best condition while being charged faster,\u201d added Prof Yazami, the Director of Battery Programmes at ERI@N.<\/span>

\u201cMy vision for the future is that every battery will have this chip, which will in turn reduce the risk of battery fires in electronic devices and electric vehicles while extending their life span.\u201d<\/span>

Worldwide annual production of portable battery cells have been predicted to grow from 13 billion in 2014, to over 35 billion by 2025 according to a report by Avicenne Energy.<\/span>

On track for commercialisation<\/span>

The smart chip took Prof Yazami more than five years to develop and is now marketed by his start-up, KVI Pte Ltd. Working together with Prof Yazami on developing the smart chip platform at ERIAN is research scientist Mr Sohaib El Outmani.<\/span>

KVI is now being incubated by NTU\u2019s commercialisation arm, NTUitive. KVI is developing this chip into a series of products, which include battery packs for recharging mobile devices, charge gauge for electric vehicles, and a smart chip for every battery.<\/span>

The start-up company has an exclusive license on Prof Yazami\u2019s ETM technology which is based on his research done in NTU Singapore, California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).<\/span>

His research incorporates two other unique factors: entropy, a measure of disorder or randomness of a system, and enthalpy, which is the sum of internal energy of a system.<\/span>

It is expected that the technology will be made available for licensing by chipmakers and battery manufacturers before the end of 2016.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scientists from Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore) have developed a smart chip which can tell you how healthy is your battery and if it is safe for use.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":6824,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","category-techbiz"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/3173.jpg",300,213,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/3173-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/3173.jpg",300,213,false],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/3173.jpg",300,213,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/3173.jpg",300,213,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/3173.jpg",300,213,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/3173.jpg",300,213,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/3173.jpg",300,213,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/3173.jpg",300,213,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/3173.jpg",300,213,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/3173.jpg",300,213,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/3173.jpg",300,213,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/3173.jpg",300,213,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/3173.jpg",92,65,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/3173.jpg",300,213,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/3173.jpg",96,68,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/3173.jpg",150,107,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Research<\/a> Tech<\/a>","tag_info":"Tech","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}