Researchers have developed a new lithium-ion battery that can
recharge within 10 minutes and hold thrice as much energy as its
existing counterparts.
The new batteries could be used in anything from cell phones to hybrid cars.
The design, currently under a provisional patent, could become commercially available within two to three years.
"It's
an exciting research. It opens the door for the design of the next
generation lithium-ion batteries," said Chongwu Zhou, professor at the
University of Southern California (USC) Viterbi School of Engineering,
who led the team that developed the battery, the journal Nano Research
reports.
Zhou worked with graduate students
Mingyuan Ge, Jipeng Rong, Xin Fang and Anyi Zhang, as well as Yunhao Lu
of Zhejiang University in China, according to a Sourthern California
statement.
Researchers have long attempted to
use silicon, which is cheap and has a high potential capacity, in
battery anodes. (Anodes are where current flows into a battery, while
cathodes are where current flows out).
The
problem has been that previous silicon anode designs, which were
basically tiny plates of the material, broke down from repeated swelling
and shrinking during charging/discharging cycles and quickly became
useless.
Last year, Zhou's team experimented
with porous silicon nano-wires that are less than 100 nano-meters across
and just a few microns long.
The tiny pores on
the nano-wires allowed the silicon to expand and contract without
breaking while simultaneously increasing the surface area - which in
turn allows lithium-ions to diffuse in and out of the battery more
quickly, improving performance.
Though the batteries functioned well, the nano-wires are difficult to manufacture en masse.
To
solve the problem, Zhou's team took commercially available
nano-particles-tiny silicon spheres-and etched them with the same pores
as the nano-wires. The particles function similarly and can be made in
any quantity desired.
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