Its easy to go through life using your shiny new power hungry gadgets without ever giving a thought to the advances in battery technology that make it all possible. There has been growing concern over the years about batteries abilities to keep up with portable electronics demands. Lucky for us there are men like South Korean Professor Cho Jae-Phil of Hanyang University, who have dedicated their lives to combating the energy drain.
Cho and his team have developed lithium batteries that are 90% more energy efficient then current batteries. That means you can do whatever it is you do eight times longer! The key to the advancement is simple, they replaced graphite with three-dimensional porous silicon particles. Patents have already been filed and Cho hinted at plans to merge the technology with solar panels.
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MONUMENTAL!
That is amazing. I hope this isn’t a fake story.
I’m impressed.
Mat
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Please check your math. A 100% improvement means the battery life is doubled, or 2x - so how you get 90% = 8x increase?
Even if it was only a ± doubling of capacity, that would be cause for great celebration!
Hi Matt, it sounds like this is for real. Its been published in scientific journals and they are filing for patents in all the major regions. I know Korea has a bad rep for wild/false claims, but this one looks real (I hope!).
Hi Fred, unfortunately I am not an expert in these matters, the source I used said
“…90 percent more energy efficient”, and “…professor at Hanyang University, claimed that the battery life of laptop computers and cellular phones can be extended eight times longer than conventional batteries with the new technology.”
The only explanation I can think of is that some of the energy in inevitability lost during storage. Would that account for the differing figures?
The claims are very similar to those made by Yi Cui at Stanford for an anode also made of silicon, but in the form of nanowires. Here’s a link to the December 2007 article. It provides a bit more insight into the benefits and difficulties of using silicon for the anode
“The electrical storage capacity of a Li-ion battery is limited by how much lithium can be held in the battery’s anode, which is typically made of carbon. Silicon has a much higher capacity than carbon, but also has a drawback.
Silicon placed in a battery swells as it absorbs positively charged lithium atoms during charging, then shrinks during use (i.e., when playing your iPod) as the lithium is drawn out of the silicon. This expand/shrink cycle typically causes the silicon (often in the form of particles or a thin film) to pulverize, degrading the performance of the battery.”
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2008/january9/nanowire-010908.html
MIT Technology Review had a few other comments on Cui’s nanowire. For example,
“Another limitation is that while Cui’s silicon nanowires make great anodes, lithium-battery technology has greater need for improved cathodes. In a given battery, substituting an anode that stores more lithium ions has no impact without a corresponding cathode that can supply more charge.”
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/20000/
Hopefully they will be able to prevent the silicon from degrading. There is always some catch to these announcements. Another step in the right direction, but it will be a long time until its commercial.
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