We all get frustrated whenever our smartphones and laptop shows a low battery. The smartphone and laptop batteries have a limited lifespan. No matter how long its battery backup is, it will surely drain once its lifespan ends. Some people who really have a busy schedule carries power bank wherever they go. So to overcome this battery life issue, researchers have developed a Nanowire-based battery.
At the University of California, Irvine (UCI), researchers has accidently demonstrated advanced battery technology that could transform the battery powered device industries.
A Nanowire-based battery can be charged and recharge thousands of times without losing its performance.
Nanowire has some mind-blowing features for storing and transmitting the electricity. They are extremely conductive.
As compared to human hair, they are thousand times thinner and can be aligned beyond the larger surface area to transfer electrons.
Nanowires are not being used instead of electrons due to its crisping nature. Normal batteries use lithium to hold the electric charge. Still, there is a major drawback.
The Lithium inside the battery consumes more charge when the battery gets charged and discharged. This causes lithium to become non-durable. And after some years, the battery gets unusable and at last leads to cracking.
Researchers found a way to overcome this barrier. They coated the nanowire with gold and layers of Manganese dioxide and Plexiglas like electrolyte gel. This combination is trustworthy and resistant to failure.
This innovation is tested more than 200,000 times within three months. The test result come out as there are no breaks or cracks in the nanowire and even it doesn’t lose any capacity or power.
Mya Le Thai, leader of the study and UCI doctoral candidate coated these whole things with a very thin Plexiglas like electrolyte gel and started to cycle it. She found just by using this gel, it is possible to cycle it hundreds or thousands of times without losing any capacity.
She said, “It was crazy because these things typically die in dramatic fashion after 5,000, 6,000 or 7,000 cycles at most.”
And finally, this accidental research proves a nanowire-based battery electrode can have a long lifetime. This means your smartphone and laptop battery would not deplete.