How University of California, Irvine Mya Le Thai made Gold nanowire in Li-Ion Batteries last Forever

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 20^th 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.

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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.