2010
New Lithium Ion Batteries are Ten Times the Charge
Stanford University’s Materials Science division Assistant Professor Yi Cui had a breakthrough in the development of electrical energy storage. The assistant professor and his team have discovered some means to extend the total capacity of current Lithium Ion batteries by a whopping ten times.
The new development promises to extend a mobile phone’s battery life from a standard talk time of 4 hours to an incredible amount of 40 hours. The team has already filed the battery’s patent application and is hoping for big mobile phone battery manufacturers to go ahead and adopt the new technology.
Or possibly get a tie-up with leading mobile phone developers to launch their invention to the public packed with a mobile phone. According to Cui, it is no small feat:
“It’s not a small improvement, it’s a revolutionary development.”
And it really is. Usually, lithium ion battery power is limited by the number of ions in the battery’s carbon-based anode. Instead of being made of a solid chunk of silicon and carbon however, Professor Yi Cui has replaced it with a bundle of silicon nanowire tubes to extend the capacity.
The standard lithium ion battery was limited by the swelling and shrinking of the silicon base as it absorbs lithium ions while charging. This causes the anode to crack over time and that limits the battery’s allowance to store energy.
It is not that companies have not tried to revise the process before. Altairnano and A123 have both tried developing a bigger capacity battery by using substitute nano-sized elements but only Cui has been able to successfully expand the lithium ion battery capacity by a tenfold.
It looks to be an interesting development. Even though the team claims it is a safer alternative to existing batteries, making way for the new technology will most likely mean new waste created in disposing the old ones. Hopefully the battery does not only have a larger capacity but a larger lifespan as well. At this day and age, scientists should really focus on responsible, economical solutions to minimize our technology’s ill effects to the environment.
Jump to Engadget for more details about this breakthrough.








