University of California, Irvine researchers have invented nanowire-based battery material that can be recharged hundreds of thousands of times, moving us closer to a battery that would never require replacement. The breakthrough work could lead to commercial batteries with greatly lengthened lifespans for computers, smartphones, appliances, cars and spacecraft.
Scientists have long sought to use nanowires in batteries. Thousands of times thinner than a human hair, they're highly conductive and feature a large surface area for the storage and transfer of electrons. However, these filaments are extremely fragile and don't hold up well to repeated discharging and recharging, or cycling. In a typical lithium-ion battery, they expand and grow brittle, which leads to cracking.
UCI researchers have solved this problem by coating a gold nanowire in a manganese dioxide shell and encasing the assembly in an electrolyte made of a Plexiglas-like gel. The combination is reliable and resistant to failure.
The study leader, UCI doctoral candidate Mya Le Thai, cycled the testing electrode up to 200,000 times over three months without detecting any loss of capacity or power and without fracturing any nanowires. The findings were published today in the American Chemical Society's Energy Letters.
Hard work combined with serendipity paid off in this case, according to senior author Reginald Penner.
"Mya was playing around, and she coated this whole thing with a very thin gel layer and started to cycle it," said Penner, chair of UCI's chemistry department. "She discovered that just by using this gel, she could cycle it hundreds of thousands of times without losing any capacity."
"That was crazy," he added, "because these things typically die in dramatic fashion after 5,000 or 6,000 or 7,000 cycles at most."
The researchers think the goo plasticizes the metal oxide in the battery and gives it flexibility, preventing cracking.
"The coated electrode holds its shape much better, making it a more reliable option," Thai said. "This research proves that a nanowire-based battery electrode can have a long lifetime and that we can make these kinds of batteries a reality."
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betterexists
1 / 5 (10) Apr 20, 2016If they begin to heat up during transit, just move the wire up again in a slant/slope fashion.
Exchange for the charged ones in coin machines. Get 10 charged batteries per week (or for what else are those home delivery/street delivery drones?)
Tektrix
4.7 / 5 (18) Apr 20, 2016Whoa, I know it's 4/20 but damn, how many bong hits have you had?
tekram
5 / 5 (9) Apr 20, 2016we report that the cycle stability of MnO2 all-nanowire
capacitors can be extended from 2000 to 8000 cycles to more
than 100 000 cycles, simply by replacing a liquid electrolyte
with a poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) gel electrolyte.
ab3a
4.4 / 5 (8) Apr 20, 2016So many questions...
DonGateley
1.7 / 5 (6) Apr 20, 2016Shakescene21
4 / 5 (4) Apr 20, 2016antialias_physorg
5 / 5 (7) Apr 21, 2016One thing at a time. They were looking at the recharge/discharge problem exclusively. That's just how you do science: you narrow your focus to address one problem at a time.
Next step will be how to see how this plays out if it's made into a real batter ycell. Next step will be to see if material costs can be reduced (gold doesn't exactly come cheap).
This is an important breakthrough, no doubt, but it's not going to jump the bridge to local store shelves tomorrow (or next year).
Mike_Massen
3.4 / 5 (5) Apr 21, 2016When this is a battery & high depth capacity such as intercalation then can advance seriously industrially, til then its a variant of contemporary super caps & at lower volts :-(
Commend the development but, journo's "spin" isnt up to scratch as a battery & so a tad misleading. Quantifies up to ~800F/g but, is it expensive re energy density for stationary application (?) its not clear what it scales up to in comparison especially self-discharge with cheap graphene competition but, its a cheap way to R&D test electrode materials in a super-cap format ie faster testing :-)
SamB
3 / 5 (2) Apr 22, 2016Shakescene21
5 / 5 (2) Apr 23, 2016Stay tuned... There's a lot of research, development, and investment ahead. Along the way some obstacle might be unsurmountable. But the potential benefits to humanity and the environment are enormous. This is leading-edge research and we don't know where it will end.
Urgelt
3.7 / 5 (7) Apr 25, 2016It's basic research.
There are hundreds, possibly thousands, of promising avenues to explore when it comes to battery tech.
Here we have learned that a particular gel electrolyte prevents the breakdown of gold nanowires used to store electrons. Next they'll want to examine different gels and nanowires to see if it works with other materials, and perhaps construct some prototype batteries so they can evaluate their properties and try some tweaks.
It's a safe bet that any particular discovery won't be commercialized. It's also a safe bet that some of them will. Better batteries are coming.
TogetherinParis
2.3 / 5 (3) Apr 25, 2016Whydening Gyre
5 / 5 (2) Apr 26, 2016Not to forget - the pocketbook potential for the successful researchers...:-)....
Eikka
not rated yet May 27, 2016The actual full cell capacity from the paper is 12-56 F/g over a charge window of 0.8 volts, which corresponds to 1-5 Watt-hours per kilogram. (page 4. table 1.)
It's has about 1-2% the capacity of lithium batteries.
With that sort of capacity, the ESOEI must be less than 1:1 meaning it takes more energy to make the capacitors than they will ever store - or to answer the question: yes, they're very very expensive.