Unbelievable, isn’t it? A laptop battery that can last for 40 hours! Research is going on at Stanford Tech to develop a hi-tech lithium ion battery that can keep your laptop running for 40 hours. You can keep those charging woes at bay for a longer time.
Assistant Professor Yi Cui and associates at Stanford’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering said they have developed a method to increase the life of rechargeable lithium ion batteries to a whopping 40 hours. Publishing in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, the Stanford researchers have shown that by using silicon nanowires as the battery anode instead of today’s graphite, the amount of lithium the anode can hold is extended tenfold.
Cui has filed a patent on the technology and is evaluating the formation of a company or licensing the technology to a battery manufacturer. Potentially two-day batteries could be on the market within “several years,” he said.
Silicon anodes are not a new idea. Researchers have known for some 30 years that they have the “highest theoretical charge capacity,” but, until now, they haven’t been practical because they change volume by 400 percent as lithium is inserted and extracted, the journal said. Cui’s solution: a sponge-like network of tiny silicon nanowires, each of which expands but doesn’t fracture.
Not only can the nanowires handle the extreme volume changes, they also “provide good electronic contact and conduction, and display short lithium insertion distances,” Cui wrote. “We achieved the theoretical charge capacity for silicon anodes and maintained a discharge capacity close to 75 percent of this maximum, with little fading during cycling.”
The nanowires are grown directly on the metallic substrate that collects current, a process that has several advantages, Cui explained. First, the nanowires’ small diameter can better accommodate the four-fold expansion in volume without fracturing. In addition, each nanowire is electrically connected to the metallic current collector, so all the nanowires contribute to battery capacity. The nanowires also offer efficient “charge transport” and eliminate the need for additives to conduct electricity, which add weight, the journal stated.
Let that sink in for a second. 40 Hours of battery life! That is ten times the life of today’s standard laptop battery. But you have to wonder how will the industry react to this recent announcement? If Cui and his associates can succeed in commercializing this breakthrough, the need for larger capacity laptop batteries will go the way of the dinosaurs.
Via Tigerdirect
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