Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumScientists accidentally create batteries that last a lifetime
If it works as well as reported, this needs to be scaled up to industrial production. Just the saving in resources over the long term would be astounding.
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RESEARCHERS AT the University of California at Irvine (UCI) have accidentally - yes, accidentally - discovered a nanowire-based technology that could lead to batteries that can be charged hundreds of thousands of times.
Mya Le Thai, a PhD candidate at the university, explained in a paper published this week that she and her colleagues used nanowires, a material that is several thousand times thinner than a human hair, extremely conductive and has a surface area large enough to support the storage and transfer of electrons.
Nanowires are extremely fragile and don't usually hold up well to repeated discharging and recharging, or cycling. They expand and grow brittle in a typical lithium-ion battery, but Le Thais team fixed this by coating a gold nanowire in a manganese dioxide shell and then placing it in a Plexiglas-like gel to improve its reliability. All by accident.
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2455715/scientists-accidentally-create-batteries-that-last-a-lifetime
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(5,402 posts)1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)I would love a law where any product, service, or resource that is developed into a commercial product, discovered through research paid for by government or in government facilities, should be released to the public for the cost of the materials.
airplaneman
(1,236 posts)Require any product, research, or pharmaceutical drug developed with government (aka tax payer money) must remain public domain the rights of which cannot be purchased for private profit. I am sure that many a small business would compete to keep the price reasonable on any good product.
-Airplane
bhikkhu
(10,708 posts)most of my accidents involve stubbed toes and papercuts and so forth...but good for them. I've read a great deal about amazing new battery developments over the years, I hope this one pans out and is marketable. After so long, we're still all driving cars with lead-acid batteries not much different from 100 years ago.
Victor_c3
(3,557 posts)But when I was in college in 2002 working on my chem degree I worked on a project where we were growing single molecule thick layers of various compounds on gold substrates. It was as easy as popping some gold in a beaker with a solution of what you were trying to coat the gold with, waiting a little bit, then pulling it out. You could alternate different layers and make a wafer with little effort.
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)I understand that manganese itself presents problems for us human beings if absorbed through skin or in water or food.
One of the world's most super duper murder capital's is a town in Australia that is in the boondocks but located right across the highway from a major manganese production facility.
Victor_c3
(3,557 posts)but you have to realize that it is bonded to oxygen which will change it's reactivity and characteristics altogether. Chlorine gas by itself is deadly but when you mix it with a little sodium you get table salt.
I just looked up manganese dioxide and apparently humans and our ancestors have been using it as a pigment to paint our skin for hundreds of thousands of years. I don't believe it would be harmful to us at all. However I guess someone thought the same thing about putting lead in paint and we saw how that turned out...
I'm not a big fan of murder either
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)Murder is usually not one of my favorite things either. (Although I love a good murder mystery.)
nilram
(2,879 posts)Accident-prone, but it's very profitable for them.
sue4e3
(731 posts)nilram
(2,879 posts)airplaneman
(1,236 posts)You cant have un-coated gold nanowires laying around you know.
-Airplane
muriel_volestrangler
(101,146 posts)"That was crazy," he added, "because these things typically die in dramatic fashion after 5,000 or 6,000 or 7,000 cycles at most."
The researchers think the goo plasticizes the metal oxide in the battery and gives it flexibility, preventing cracking.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-04-chemists-battery-technology-off-the-charts-capacity.html#jCp