This is both elegant and beautiful and
let us hope it becomes the new gold standard for this type of battery. It may also apply to the EEStor super
capacitor design protocol. It at least
appears prospective.
The potential of this design protocol
will surely apply across many other products and will see plenty of
application.
At least the comparison to a pomegranate
makes it completely intelligible to anyone.
FEB. 20, 2014
- 2:15 PM PST
SUMMARY:
A
new battery innovation borrows from nature and could solve some big problems
with using silicon in lithium in batteries.
The
lithium ion battery could get a boost from the humble pomegranate. According to
researchers at Stanford, including Amprius founder Yi Cui, and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory,
clustering tiny silicon particles in a hard carbon rind — like seeds in a
pomegranate — could be a helpful design breakthrough for using silicon in the
next generation of lithium ion batteries.
A
lithium-ion battery — the standard being used in gadgets today — is made up of three
pieces: an anode, a cathode and an electrolyte that shuttles lithium-ions
between the cathode and anode. That shuttling process is what happens when you
charge and discharge a battery.
Scientists
have long wanted to use silicon in the anode of a lithium ion battery because
it can hold more energy per given volume than the traditional graphite that is
commonly used — so a silicon anode battery could be smaller and lighter but
also more energy dense.
But
silicon can degrade and break over time throughout the charging and discharging
process. Cui has spearheaded a lot of the work on nano-structured silicon
battery anodes that can hold up under the charging process, and Amprius is
using that technology for its longer-lasting
battery.
This
new pomegranate design further works on that research and could be
commercialized in batteries for cell phones, tablets and even electric cars. In
experiments the team says that the structure holds up with 97 percent capacity
after 1,000 cycles. The carbon rind around the silicon pomegranate seeds
enables electrical current but protects the silicon from reacting with the
electrolyte.
The
scientists published their findings in Nature Nanotechnology this week. More incremental battery
innovations will be needed to provide long-enough lasting batteries to power
our always-on gadgets and the coming way of electric cars.
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