A new technology extends the life of li-ion batteries with the help of manganese. Another recent study though indicated that the same could be achieved using carbon nanotubes and sugar. Faced with the problem of short li-ion battery lives, scientists suggested adding silicon at the anode of the batteries to increase the charge. Unfortunately, this seems to have the opposite effect as during charge-discharge cycles, the silicon alloys and de-alloys. To solve this problem, scientists from China's Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science turned to carbon nanotubes (CNTs).
To form silicon carbon nanotubes (Si-CNT), scientists used chemical vapor deposition technique on the surface of silicon particles. The resulting Si-CNT material is subsequently coated with carbon coming from sugar while carbon nanotube-less silicon particles were also coated to serve as the control. The results were clear as day: sugar-coated Si-CNT particles exhibit a 727 mAh per gram discharge capacity while the control subject only exhibited 363 mAh per gram. It means that when Si-CNT and sugar work together, extending li-ion battery life could indeed be possible.