A very happy accident occurred during Mya Le Thai's doctoral thesis research, which will greatly upset replacement battery suppliers everywhere. Lithium-ion batteries slowly lose the ability to charge fully and to hold that charge as they are used and recharged multiple times. There are several reasons why this occurs and her team of researchers were trying to find a way to avoid some of those reasons by using nanowires to store and transfer electrons. This method has not been very successful in the past as nanowires are very brittle and would degrade over time in the same way other solutions did. However, in what The Inquirer refers to as an accident, the team discovered that coating gold nanowires in a manganese dioxide shell and then placing it in a Plexiglas-like gel resolved that problem, their test battery has now been recharged over 200,000 times in the space of three months, with no measurable loss of total capacity or power delivery. Hopefully this technology does not end up patented and sitting on a shelf unused to ensure we still need to continually replace the batteries we use.
"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."
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They are going to rub him
They are going to rub him out. Ruuuuub him out!
It need gold to work? So no
It need gold to work? So no mainstream products, but I can see it being used in some things were cost is not a problem, like satellites and space probes.
You can electroplate
You can electroplate extremely thin layers of gold. Look at all the cables and connectors that are plated. It’s not cost prohibitive.
Without an industrial process
Without an industrial process for mass production, lab discoveries are useless for the lambda consumer. This announce is a lab advertisement for a research funding. This event leads me to the following question: why funding research with accidental discoveries? 😀
You know how many discoveries
You know how many discoveries are accidental? I see this as more of a reason why we need massive funding for base research.
I don’t need to waste my
I don’t need to waste my bucks for research entertainment… fund it with your massive wallet, mine is depleted. 😉
What on earth is this author
What on earth is this author talking about, those are symmetric LiMnO2 capacitators operating at 1,2V. For supercaps (which those basically are) 100k-200k cycles are not unusual..
i’m not going into the specifics but if you read the source:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acsenergylett.6b00029 here
and compare it with numbers (which requieres some work because all comparable metrics are for capacitators, further prooves this has nothing to do with batteries) you’ll see that the material is interesting but not some magical breakthrough that it’s hyped up to be
Thanks for that link!
Thanks for that link!
Doesn’t really matter since
Doesn’t really matter since the “discovery” is regarding the longevity of the nanowire no matter if its used in a capacitor or a battery.
Being able to use nanowires in batteries/capacitors is something that has been worked on for a while with the intent of increasing power density due to the extra surface areas.
However they have been too brittle due to size changes during charge/discharge process and if these results are accurate it is a big breakthrough.
im aware of this, but the
im aware of this, but the problem with this research is the use of pmma. this electrolyte is not stable to the voltage that is needed for battery operation, which is usually >3V. PMMA degrades substabially over very few cycles when used under such high-voltage conditions.
as the source states, when used with convetional electrolyte (PC eg.) the material delaminated quickly, which is exactly what you would expect from a MO-deposid on a conductor (Au) while underdoing electrochemical conversion/de- and reintercalation of Li (due to lattice expansion and contraction)
There are plenty of
There are plenty of discoveries that where accidental(Teflon for instance) so this happy accident will be licensed to the market place producers of battery technology if the claims are indeed correct. The US government, and the world needs the technology to get over the dependence of fossil fuels, so this means that batteries will last much longer before they will have to be replaced. Now get more funding for getting fusion to market and also some more Thorium based nuclear plants online before fusion can be made to replace Thorium based fissile reactors. Thorium based reactors can also be used to consume other nuclear waste products.
The climate change problems will continue to get worse until the atmospheric carbon-dioxide and other greenhouse gasses emissions can be stopped. Battery powered cars and buses charged by carbon/greenhouse gas neutral power production processes will be necessary if the climate change issues are to be resolved.
The technology will alread have been patented by the researcher/university or whoever funded the research depending on the exact nature of the funding. So that will be the researcher’s and University of California at Irvine’s/Funder’s(?) patent, if it can be economically replicated. You can bet that UC Irvine’s/Funder’s(?) lawyers have already done the patent filings in advance of any papers/announcements on this discovery!
If you feel so concerned
If you feel so concerned about carbon-dioxide you should avoid to waste dioxygen polluting with your climate scam… the truth is life kills people every day with political taxes based on lies with environmental excuses. Humanity won’t die tomorrow because of carbon-dioxide or any other gas. Man is an animal with a survival instinct and he will adapt his way of life to its environment even if the sky is falling on its head!
I don’t normally comment, but
I don’t normally comment, but you’re such a raging full-of-crap wingnut that I had to let you know.
No one said the earth will
No one said the earth will come to an end, maybe some coastal flooding of low lying cities and such or some very bad dry spells for some farmers. I have respiratory problems so the sooner cars and trucks are using mostly electric powered methods the less of the other pollutants there will be for me to worry about provided they use Nuclear power/solar/wind/wave power to generate the charging/running electricity. Even natural gas powered plants are not so bad, provided there are the scrubbers to keep down the CO2 and other pollutants! In fact it’s easier to manage the pollution control hardware on most power plants than it is to manage the pollution control equipment on millions of cars/buses/trucks! So it’s not about some global catastrophe it’s more about it getting too hot in the northeast, or other northern latitudes and changing the environment to a more tropical one farther north with all of the tropical diseases and such that happens in hotter climates.
The biggest scam of the post industrial parts of the world is that no one is training the Joe Six-packs like yourself to move back to the country and become farmers. The government needs to offer some farming classes to them and get them back to the farm(Fund farm purchases like they fund housing loans) where they can become productive and not contribute to the crime rates in the cities. It’s much more than just the greenhouse gasses it’s the other pollutants, look at China that pollution can kill, so even they need to move towards the electric car options to keep the air pollution down.
You should try to live to
You should try to live to Fukushima or Chernobyl because only your health excuse matters…
Actually the biggest scam about global warming is that’s a lie made by fake climate experts to rip off tax payers money. Taxes never saved dinosaurs so it won’t save humanity.
Only dumb people believe they can domesticate the climate but you can probably make something to reduce the CO2 pollution by not reproducing yourself!
Thorium reactors would have
Thorium reactors would have not melted down, go back to the farm Joe, you can still get your six-packs there. It’s the post industral world where you live and those factories have closed in your part of the world. Get out of the cities and towns where you Joe bring property values down, and cause the crime rates to go sky high!
You will not get the factories back unless they are staffed by robots, so get your sweaty meatsack back to the farm!
“Taxes never saved dinosaurs
"Taxes never saved dinosaurs so it won't save humanity."
That is one of my new favourites ever.
Here come the lobbyists. I
Here come the lobbyists. I hope this makes it into the consumer market.
*RING RING!
Oh my, its Elon
*RING RING!
Oh my, its Elon Musk on the phone, he wants to buy your patent.
Manganese? Will it be as
Manganese? Will it be as strong as Ippo Makunouchi?
Jokes aside, though…the Inquirer…eww. Just…eww.
The price of gold just went
The price of gold just went up in speculation. 😉
How do you accidentally coat
How do you accidentally coat gold nanowires in a manganese dioxide shell and then accidentally place them in a Plexiglas-like gel? Accidents like this never happen to me.
Contaminated lab sample? The
Contaminated lab sample? The fact they mention a plexiglas-like Gel sounds to me like they were preparing a sample to put it under a microscope or some other test. Then probably got readings way out of line with what they were expecting and started searching why.
Because students make
Because students make accidental discoveries and professional researchers discover accidents. :o)
Actually professional researchers scam students in their lab pretending teaching them something to validate their degree but instead rip off their ideas and write fairy tales to fund their free time.