Solid State Batteries - The Future of Energy Storage.

Solid-state battery technology uses solid electrodes and electrolytes instead of liquid or polymer gel electrolytes which are found in lithium-ion or lithium-polymer batteries. Using the solid electrolyte,these batteries produce some solid performance gains over the lithium ion and lithium polymer batteries. 

Firstly, a solid can be more stable than a liquid in the batteries. Thus solid-state batteries can operate at much higher temperatures. Therefore we can pump a lot more power into it while charging, decreasing its charging time. Whereas a lithium-ion or polymer battery is highly flammable because of which many times the mobile phones have blasted causing severe injuries and even death. You might have seen the power rating of your mobile charger and wonder why can't we increase it and charge it faster, it's due to its flammable property. Solid-state batteries are going to end this issue. 

In lithium ion or polymer batteries , over time solid structure called dentrites are formed which makes the flow of ions difficult. Since solid-state batteries have a similar structure just using solid electrolyte instead of liquid thus ruling out any formation of dentrites like structures. They can hold the charges for a longer time. Due to this the life span of the solid-state batteries can be up to 10 years compared to 2-3 years of the lithium-ion or polymer batteries.

Having a solid electrolyte instead of liquid, we can swap the material in the anode making it much slimmer. 
Talking about the main advantage of solid-state batteries over lithium-ion ones is the energy density that is the amount of energy the battery can store of a given size and when we compare the energy storage capacity of a solid-state battery, it is about 4-7 times more than that of lithium polymer battery of the same size. According to Hitachi Zosen which is a Japanese firm has claimed that its solid batteries have a capacity of 1000 milliamp hours.

            So we can imagine a world where our cell phones can last upto 7-10 days without any charge. We can go on long drives on our electric cars without having to worry about availability of the charging stations in that region. The only thing which has stopped it to enter the consumer market is the lack of technology to mass produce them but few companies have been working to scale up the production and they are successful to a great extent. We can expect them in our consumer electronics within 5 years or so.