Batteries.
It's not often we think of batteries until we need them (usually when they've just gone dead at exactly the wrong time).
Over a couple of hundred years batteries have evolved from carboys or jars filled with acid and metal plates to compact cells with high energy capacity installed in packs for all kinds of equipment, from laptops to cell phones to iPods to hybrid autos, just to name a few.
The battery chemistry of choice these days is lithium ion, also called Li-Ion. Li-Ion batteries have very high capacity while having little weight in comparison to other chemistries like lead-acid, alkaline, zinc-air, carbon-zinc, or nickel metal hydride (or NiMH).
Early Li-Ion cells were temperamental and not forgiving of abuse, often catching fire if they were over charged or physically damaged. But better electrode materials and electrolyte chemicals have greatly reduced that danger, making them far safer than they used to be. (That's not to say they're perfectly safe.) The big attraction of lithium-ion batteries, as anyone using batteries on a regular basis can tell you, is the high capacity, which allows longer time between recharges for the electronic and electrical equipment that uses them. That's why Li-Ion batteries have supplanted most other rechargeable battery types in portable equipment. But as good as Li-Ion batteries have become, they are slated to become >even better.
Who knew that battery technology could actually be exciting?
It's not often we think of batteries until we need them (usually when they've just gone dead at exactly the wrong time).
Over a couple of hundred years batteries have evolved from carboys or jars filled with acid and metal plates to compact cells with high energy capacity installed in packs for all kinds of equipment, from laptops to cell phones to iPods to hybrid autos, just to name a few.
The battery chemistry of choice these days is lithium ion, also called Li-Ion. Li-Ion batteries have very high capacity while having little weight in comparison to other chemistries like lead-acid, alkaline, zinc-air, carbon-zinc, or nickel metal hydride (or NiMH).
Early Li-Ion cells were temperamental and not forgiving of abuse, often catching fire if they were over charged or physically damaged. But better electrode materials and electrolyte chemicals have greatly reduced that danger, making them far safer than they used to be. (That's not to say they're perfectly safe.) The big attraction of lithium-ion batteries, as anyone using batteries on a regular basis can tell you, is the high capacity, which allows longer time between recharges for the electronic and electrical equipment that uses them. That's why Li-Ion batteries have supplanted most other rechargeable battery types in portable equipment. But as good as Li-Ion batteries have become, they are slated to become >even better.
Researchers at the Institute for Chemistry and Technology of Materials [at Graz University of Technology in Austria] have developed a new method that utilises silicon for lithium-ion batteries. Its storage capacity is ten times higher than the graphite substrate which has been used up to now, and promises considerable improvements for users.Researchers at Stanford University have developed something similar, using silicon nanowires to coat the graphite, potentially boosting the battery capacity by a factor of ten. If either of these methods become commercially available, we could see cell phone batteries that will give a user 24 hours of talk time, and laptop batteries with 20 hours or more of run time. It could also make hybrid or all-electric automobiles far more cost effective, using smaller battery packs, all while extending the range between charges.
In the newly developed process, researchers utilise a silicon-containing gel and apply it to the graphite substrate material. "In this way the graphite works as a buffer, cushioning the big changes in volume of the silicon during the uptake and transfer of lithium ions," explains Koller.
Silicon has a lithium-ion storage capacity some ten times higher than the up-to-now commercially used graphite. The new material can thus store more than double the quantity of lithium ions without changes to the battery lifetime.
Who knew that battery technology could actually be exciting?
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