Article from yahoo Tech News...40 hour Laptop Batteries.
....This scenario may become reality in the near future, if Stanford University scientists succeed in commercializing a breakthrough in the laboratory. Assistant Professor Yi Cui and associates at Stanford's Department of Materials Science and Engineering said they have developed a method to increase the life of rechargeable lithium ion batteries to a whopping 40 hours.
"It's not a small improvement," Cui said. "It's a revolutionary development." And Cui means to move the development out of the lab as soon as possible. "We are working on scaling up and evaluating the cost of our technology," Cui said. "There are no roadblocks for either of these."
Cui has filed a patent on the technology and is evaluating the formation of a company or licensing the technology to a battery manufacturer. Potentially two-day batteries could be on the market within "several years," he said.
Silicon anodes are not a new idea. Researchers have known for some 30 years that they have the "highest theoretical charge capacity," but, until now, they haven't been practical because they change volume by 400 percent as lithium is inserted and extracted, the journal said. Cui's solution: a sponge-like network of tiny silicon nanowires, each of which expands but doesn't fracture.
Not only can the nanowires handle the extreme volume changes, they also "provide good electronic contact and conduction, and display short lithium insertion distances," Cui wrote. "We achieved the theoretical charge capacity for silicon anodes and maintained a discharge capacity close to 75 percent of this maximum, with little fading during cycling."
The nanowires are grown directly on the metallic substrate that collects current, a process that has several advantages, Cui explained. First, the nanowires' small diameter can better accommodate the four-fold expansion in volume without fracturing. In addition, each nanowire is electrically connected to the metallic current collector, so all the nanowires contribute to battery capacity..... Source Yahoo! Tech News
"It's not a small improvement," Cui said. "It's a revolutionary development." And Cui means to move the development out of the lab as soon as possible. "We are working on scaling up and evaluating the cost of our technology," Cui said. "There are no roadblocks for either of these."
Cui has filed a patent on the technology and is evaluating the formation of a company or licensing the technology to a battery manufacturer. Potentially two-day batteries could be on the market within "several years," he said.
Silicon anodes are not a new idea. Researchers have known for some 30 years that they have the "highest theoretical charge capacity," but, until now, they haven't been practical because they change volume by 400 percent as lithium is inserted and extracted, the journal said. Cui's solution: a sponge-like network of tiny silicon nanowires, each of which expands but doesn't fracture.
Not only can the nanowires handle the extreme volume changes, they also "provide good electronic contact and conduction, and display short lithium insertion distances," Cui wrote. "We achieved the theoretical charge capacity for silicon anodes and maintained a discharge capacity close to 75 percent of this maximum, with little fading during cycling."
The nanowires are grown directly on the metallic substrate that collects current, a process that has several advantages, Cui explained. First, the nanowires' small diameter can better accommodate the four-fold expansion in volume without fracturing. In addition, each nanowire is electrically connected to the metallic current collector, so all the nanowires contribute to battery capacity..... Source Yahoo! Tech News
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