Serendipitous
discoveries are quite the thing in science. In the case of university doctoral
candidate Mya Le Thai, it may prove to be the discovery of a lifetime.
Researchers
at the University of California, Irvine jointly along with nanostructure
researchers at the University of Maryland have “discovered” a way to make gold
nanowires last longer in a Li-Ion Battery assembly as reported in the article “UCI
scientists stumble upon the key to never-ending batteries”, published April
22, 2016 By Rick Stella, Digitaltrends.
Their
research was published in the on Wednesday April 20th 2016 in the American Chemical Society’s Energy
Letters. Interestingly, this video spins a better story than I could ever
write, abstract and all.
Gold
nanowires are used as filaments in Li-Ion batteries. As thin as a human hair,
they're very fragile and break easily. When assembled into a Li-Ion Battery as
connectors to carry electrical charge during charging/discharging, they usually
break down after 5,000 to 6,000.
After
the coating, the gold nanowires lasted for a whopping 200,000 charge/discharge
cycles over a three (3) month period. Interestingly, the Li-Ion battery
continued to charge/discharge without any drop in capacity or power output.
.
So
what evil force possessed university doctoral candidate Mya Le Thai to even
think of adding more mass to something so delicate that probably cost a fortune
to make at such a small level?
University of
California, Irvine Mya Le Thai eternal Gold nanowire – How dipping it in
manganese dioxide did the trick
This
serendipitous discovery means Hydrogen Fuel Cell in your Apple iPhone as
predicted in my blog
article entitled “Intelligent
Energy Hydrogen Fuel Cell for Apple - How Hydrogen can give Apple products
weeks of battery life by 2017” will have to take a back seat.
The
coating that was added was manganese dioxide (MnO2) which was then
placed in an electrolyte gel.
Possibly
the manganese dioxide provided a well of extra electrons that prevented the
normally fragile gold nanowire from breaking down as surmised in “All powered up”,
published April 20 2016, University of
California, Irvine News.
Or
it may be as simple as making the gold nanowire more flexible and bendable as
Mya Le Thai pointed out, quote: “The coated electrode holds its shape much
better, making it a more reliable option. 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.”
Whatever
the cause for this boost in performance, Li-Ion Batteries with better
performance may be only 2 to 5 years away after this get's thoroughly
explained, an industrial process developed and then patent applications filed
for potential uses.
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