UCI researcher discovers important Li-Ion battery breakthrough

fudzilla.com ^ | 28 April 2016 | Jon Worrel

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

M_nO₂-coated batteries can now last 400 years, 200,000 cycles

Doctoral research student Maya Le Thai was working in her laboratory with nanobatteries one day when she decided to try a new approach. She coated an entire gold nanowire with a manganese dioxide M_nO₂ shell and covered the assembly with a "plexiglass-like" electrolyte gel, but the resulting outcome was completely unexpected.

As she "playfully" experimented with different materials, the resulting nanobattery produced effectively "unlimited" lifetime charge cycles lasting well over 400 years.

Traditional nanowire-based batteries are thousands of times thinner than a human hair, highly conductive and feature a large surface area for the transferring and storing electrons. In practice, however, they are extremely fragile and don't hold up to repeated charging or cycling - a typical laptop battery holds around 300 to 500 charge cycles, for example. In lithium-ion batteries, nanowires usually expand and grow brittle or crack over time.



Using the UC Irvine doctoral researcher's technique, the M_nO₂-coated gold nanowire was able to last up to 200,000 charge cycles over a span of three months without even detecting any power degradation or nanowire fracturing. The official test rates the resulting battery “with 94–96% average Coulombic efficiency.” In other words, it was effectively still new at the end of the three-month experiment.


Source: ACS Energy Letters

The researchers think the plexiglass-like" electrolyte gel somehow plasticizes the metal oxide in the battery and gives it flexibility, preventing cracking.

[tinyowl]

LI-Ion ... remarkable ... is this the secret power behind Ted Cruz?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Another Battery story ....but interesting!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Diagrams and graphs at Fudzilla link.

[bigbob]

is it knife-poke proof?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEo0RhEhFYc

[TChad]

Battery makers may come to hate her.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

*****************************************EXCERPT********************************

What's new here with the UC Irvine discovery is the combination of the plexiglass-like PMMA electrolyte gel with manganese dioxide (M_nO₂) coating, leading to the unprecedented breakthrough in cycling efficiency from the usual 1,000 cycle maximum to over 200,000 cycles.

[A CA Guy]

When do the Chinese rob that and use slave labor to cut the competition out of business?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Ohhh...scary!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Someone has to figure out how to make them before they can get to the store Shelves.

[minnesota_bound]

#7 I had a similar idea but I was using a plexiglass-like PMMA electrolyte mousse instead of a gel.....

[BraveMan]

This mousse involve your sister? That would be nasti . . .

[aquila48]

“When do the Chinese rob...”

You mean the Chinese lady who discovered this (Maya le Thai)? Check out the video in the article. She sure looks chinese.

[Marine_Uncle]

Sounds as if it would not be reliable enough for many critical applications.
Say critical electronic systems and power generation for aircraft, tanks, naval ships, etc., to name a few things.

[Foundahardheadedwoman]

Buy Gold. Great conductor and you can use it as money.

[taildragger]

OK, not a chemist on this end, but is the M-02 here doing the trick w/ the Li-Ion or the Gold? My guess is it is the Gold. Don’t get me wrong, Gold is an amazing metal but I don’t have to tell you it is pricey as all get up. The question begs, did she try less expensive metals such as Silver, Tungsten, or even Titanium?

[IronJack]

Manganese dioxide is one of the most frequently used catalysts for any number of reactions. Someone needs to study this stuff and figure out why.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Ernest.