Seeo internship journal.

I've decided to use this blog to post about my work experience interning here at Seeo Inc. I'll make a post every day to update about how things are going. I'm kind of backlogged since I started my journal a few weeks back, but I'll post a few a day to catch up.

Monday 5/18/09

            Today is my first day at Seeo, Inc, a small startup consisting of around 15 employees working on developing solid-state Lithium ion batteries for different uses. The company’s goal is to eventually implement them in various technologies such as automobiles, laptop computers, and solar panels, among others. One may wonder, what’s wrong with the liquid Lithium ion batteries that are used now? There are a few advantages that a solid-state battery has over a liquid one, the primary reason being safety. Liquid based Lithium ion batteries have a chance to catch fire and explode if exposed to high temperatures. The electrode material can release oxygen when overcharged, causing the flammable solvent to catch fire and the battery to explode. You may have heard in the news about the string laptop battery recalls lately, many from big name computer manufacturers such as Sony, Dell, HP, and Toshiba. Solid-state batteries reduce this risk because of its low flammability and reactivity. Other advantages of solid-state batteries include its cyclability, how many times a battery can be charged and discharged before losing its charge retaining capacity, economy, and weight. The solid-state batteries are lighter and more compact, and can provide more energy with the same amount of weight, and they are also much cheaper to produce, since they can be packaged in heat-sealed pouches instead of being housed in a laser-welded metal container to prevent leakage. My first day was mostly uneventful. I got a tour of the lab facilities that SEEO has from Albert, my de facto mentor, and I sat in on the meetings of the two groups, the synthesis group, which works on developing the materials for the batteries, and the cell group, which creates and tests the batteries with the different materials that the synthesis group makes. Albert also demonstrated to me how to make a simple Lithium symmetric cell. There was a delicious pizza lunch, and I got to meet and talk to everyone in the company. It’s a pretty good working environment and atmosphere.