Ann: BNNT Facilitates Revolutionary Lithium Battery, page-41

Hi Gumleaf21,
Yes you are right on. The BLiSs battery (name I have given it - B for BNNT, LiSs for Lithium Sulphide and s for polysulphide) is superior both in energy density (1155 vs <500 Wh/kg) and cycling stability (>450 vs ~250).

I'm not sure if there is significance of the words in the Figure 1 caption of "continuous cycles" (charge and discharge) but that is impressive. In their testing they have gone a lot more cycles (at least 800) and another interesting part of the research you can dig up is that they get pleasing performance at 10C levels (ie at high rates). The question is going to be how well the research transfers to a commercial outcome but its certainly well-ahead of the game.

I have used OXIS as a reference for that very reason - they provide good reference data and videos on their website - and they are also moving forward with commercialisation.

However, its looking more and more like non-BNNT approaches will be left behind. To be fair, not many researchers have had ready access to high purity BNNT and hence not much effort has gone to this approach and hence there are few mentions of it in the literature. In fact, in one article looking at BNNTs for medical applications (due to its non-toxicity), researchers procured > nominally 90% purity BNNT (at >US$1,500 per gram from Merck/Sigma), then had to put a significant effort in to purify it before they could conduct their research!

The more you read the more it becomes apparent that PPK/Deakin are unlocking a new world order based on BNNT because they can produce it under a patented process developed over a decade, in quantity, at high purity, and much lower cost. No-one can remotely match this and the best approach would be for others to research the application rather than try to produce their own BNNT. What a powerful position to be in if you are PPK/Deakin.