Lithium Silicon Nanowire Battery - 10 Times As Much Energy!
Posted by Max Dunn Wed, 09 Jan 2008 18:16:00 GMT
An revolutionary new technology is being developed by Stanford researcher Yi Cui that could could generate 10 times more energy from lithium-ion batteries. The trick is that instead of using carbon anodes, they use silicon nanowires because silicon can hold large amounts of lithium atoms. The nanowire technology allows these small wires to swell to four times their normal size without breaking. [1]
When Cui’s paper was originally submitted six months ago, they had only achieved 30 charge-discharge cycles. Since that time however, Cui’s team has pushed the battery through 1000 cycles. [2]
Ultimately, these batteries should be cheap to build. However, they are probably 5 years away from being commercialized. [3]
In reality though, the “10 times more energy” figure is just the theoretical charge capacity increase in the silicon anode, so a real production battery won’t see that much improvement. But even if it improves the overall energy density of a lithium ion battery by 2 or 3 times, that would still be very significant.
[1] Nanowire battery can hold 10 times the charge of existing lithium-ion battery
[2] New Nanowire Battery Life Reaches From iPods to Electric Cars
[3] GM-Volt.com: Interview with Dr. Cui, Inventor of Silicon Nanowire Lithium-ion Battery Breakthrough