Stanford Tech researchers hope to have a new kind of lithium ion battery available in a few years. The tech could boost battery life to ten times the current capacity.
Professor Yi Cui and his team resurrection an old but abandoned method for charging the batteries: Silicon anodes. These have a theoretical capacity ten times larger than that of the graphite anodes currently used, but were left for dead, as they expand up to 400 times when charged, smashing themselves in the process.
If the silicon is made into nanowires, however, the problem goes away. The silicon still expands, but doesn't pulverise the battery. Instead the nanowires jostle closer together, but don't break, and still transfer charge into the lithium. The diagram shows this best.
What does this mean for gadget lovers? It means we can quit whining about non user-replaceable batteries in notebooks.
High-performance lithium battery anodes using silicon nanowires [Nature via Cnet]
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