Car Car batteries as big as cell phones?

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Car batteries as big as cell phones?

CHANDIGARH: Imagine powering up your car with a battery as small as that of your mobile phone, charging it once and still running hundreds of kilometres. This Sci-Fi-like plot is the quest of a Punjabi man who has spent a large part of his life with IBM.

Gurinder Pal Singh, who was born in Patiala, was part of the research team of IBM that changed the way data is stored on hard drives — from bulky, refrigerator-sized boxes holding small pockets of data to compact devices with storage up to 4 terabytes. After retiring in 2013, he took a year off and decided to apply the same principle to vehicle batteries.

Away from his home in San Jose, USA, Singh is presently staying in Panjab University (PU) to research on this project. He wants to locally develop compact rechargeable lithium ion batteries that can power up vehicles without polluting the atmosphere, changing the way people use transport in the country.

"Currently, India imports its Lithium ion batteries. These batteries, if used to run cars, rickshaws or bicycles, would offer a more efficient and environment-friendly mode of transport," he said. "These could also back-up as small solar plants," he added.

"While such batteries can replace fuel in cars, it will be a more humane way of using rickshaws that currently use only human power. You could see more people move around on bicycles if it required less labour," he added.

"Effectively, what we are looking at is storing more energy at a cheaper price, in a smaller package - just like we did with the disk drives. The physical capacity of lithium ion batteries hasn't been reached. The size could be reduced tenfold," added Singh, who is currently playing the role of adviser to PU and PEC University of Technology in his attempts to develop an inter-disciplinary team that can research and work on this project.

To realize such a dream, Singh feels it was important to manufacture such batteries at home. "An industrialist had set up such a plant in Ropar in 2000. He was probably thinking ahead of his time, which is why the plant eventually shut down," Singh added.

Besides the researchers, Singh also intends to stay in touch with the industry to get to know their needs and requirements. He agrees it will take time and a total infrastructural makeover. "We cannot go towards battery driven cars so soon. We will need high-power charging points at various locations that can quickly charge the vehicles to enable long distance travel," he said.

Singh feels the country has much to catch up. "Currently, China is leading the world with battery-powered bicycles. Like we say in hockey, don't go where the ball is but where it is going to be," he added.

Singh, who did his MSc from Patiala and PhD from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), worked at the IBM Research Division and then at Hitachi and Western Digital between 1984 and 2013.

Reading disk drives better:

Focus of Singh's personal research while working on disk drive technology at IBM, Hitachi and Western Digital included improvements in the read and write heads on a disk drive. To read and write data on the disk, one needs to have the read and write heads come very close to the disk. Read and write heads are mounted on a piece of ceramic called slider that can fly very close to the disk. This is accomplished by etching an air bearing on the slider surface facing the disk. "We developed technologies that allowed the slider to fly as close as 10nm to disk. During read and write, the head was brought as close as 2nm from the disk, further using thermal actuation. This small spacing allows one to read and write very small magnetic data bits on the disk," Singh explained.