Recent advances in battery technology could mean that the next generation of batteries will last ten times longer than current batteries.The new tech known as Lithium-air batteries use the oxygen in the air as part of the chemical reactions that make batteries work.The biggest hurdle up until now has been that the oxygen also reacts with other parts of the battery causing them to deteriorate.But the latest research has turned up an electrolyte material that doesn’t react with oxygen.
This means that, in the lab at least,Lithium-air batteries are stable and can be charged-discharged multiple times without a performance drop.If these batteries ever make it to the market,they could have ten times the capacity of today’s lithium battery.So what does that mean for smartphones and tablets?The average battery life of the Samsung Galaxy S3 while surfing the web is a little over 5 hours.Now imagine the same phone with a Lithium-air battery,that number would jump to 50 hours.
In a few years,the nightmare of mobile users may be winding down.A team of researchers from the northwestern U.S.University has just published an article in the journal advanced energy materials by sharing their work on lithium-ion batteries,which power our mobiles today,tablets and laptops.Their prospects are promising.“We found a way to increase the autonomy of a lithium-ion by ten at the beginning of life. “Said Harold h.Kung,who oversees research,in a statement.He adds that “even after 150 charge,one year or more use,the battery is still five times more effective than lithium ion on the market.” Second advantage of these new kind of batteries: they can be recharged in minutes!
What about a tablet? The advertised battery life of the Amazon Kindle Fire is 8 hours for video playback.This means you can watch a couple of films and still have enough charge to check your email and play a bit of Angry Birds.But what if it had a Lithium-air battery.The theoretical life would be 80 hours.That means you could charge the tablet and then use it for an entire week.You could watch a film a day and spend several hours surfing the web and playing games and still have power in the nimh batteries after seven or eight days.With 80 hours of potential battery life,tablet and smartphone designers would have unprecedented power resources available.This could be used to power brighter displays and boost the usage of traditionally battery draining items such as Bluetooth,NFC and GPS.It also means that less battery material needs to be used making the devices smaller and lighter.
Our researchers have managed,by changing the anode to caser more ions.Able to retain more ions (four ions for each silicon atom).Result: the energy density is increased tenfold,and the battery can hold well load longer.To speed up loading,Kung team conducted a further modification of the accumulator.By chemical oxidation,it has created tiny holes in the graphene sheets,which serve as shortcuts to the ions as they pass from the cathode to the anode to find their place between two sheets of graphene.
To understand how the team managed to kung improve the performance of lithium-ion,we must consider the limitations of batteries,charged through the transfer of ions from the cathode to the anode and then provide the energy when these same ions leave the anode to go to the cathode.Yes,but here it is: the amount of ions that can store the anode is very limited.American researchers have managed to improve lithium batteries performance in graphene,a new material from graphite,very promising for the batteries of the future.“Anode-made of graphene sheets stacked on each other-may only contain a lithium atom to six carbon atoms,which is composed graphene,” said the varsity team.
They no longer have to go through the sides of the leaves, “which takes so long that it creates a traffic jam on the banks of ionic material. “This discovery helps to reduce by ten the duration of the load.Researchers will now study the cathode,in an attempt to further improve the efficiency of batteries.They also want to develop a technique that will allow the battery to turn off automatically if it starts to overheat.They imagine a security especially for the lithium-ion batteries of electric cars,which could also,through this research,have smaller batteries and more efficient.Team provides an entry into the market of these revolutionary batteries in three to five years.
