Revolutionary nanowire battery delivers 10x the charge of lithium-ion

By Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 16 January 2008 14:17

Opinion and Analysis

An amazing new nanowire battery has finally been developed that delivers the revolutionary leap in battery technology we’ve all been waiting for, giving our gadgets and notebooks up to 10x the battery life, while reliably powering the electric cars of tomorrow. At last!

Although Moore’s Law sees computing technology double in power every 18 months, battery technology is said to double in capacities every 18 years by comparison, explaining why processors and hard drives have advanced so rapidly while batteries have improved at a much slower pace.

So it’s exciting to hear that Stanford researchers have discovered a new type of battery using silicon nanowires which they say has 10x the life of today’s lithium-ion batteries.

Given that research on using silicon in batteries started 30 years ago, that 18 year timeframe for battery improvements looks like it held up.

An easy example of what nanowire batteries means can easily be been with today’s notebook computer. If its battery lasts for 4 or 5 hours, a nanowire battery should provide 40 to 50 hours of life, giving you a computer that you could use on and off for 5 hours a day – and not need to recharge for well over a week!

There’s also all the gadgets we use today, most of which only offer a few hours of real battery life, such as mobile phones which might offer days of ‘standby time’ but only 3 or 4 hours of actual talk time, which is rendered shorter still if advanced features are used such as browsing, streaming media, listening to music, playing games, etc.

All those iPods and other mp3 players, digital cameras, mobile phones, handheld games consoles and anything else that uses batteries will also now enjoy dramatically longer battery life once nanowire batteries are sold in the technology we buy.

The technology was developed through research led by Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, who worked with his graduate chemistry student Candace Chan and five others to create the new battery thanks to the wonders of nanotechnology, said that: "It's not a small improvement. It's a revolutionary development”.

So, will Cui take the battery technology public so we, the public, can use it and enjoy tremedously long battery life? And what about using nanowire batteries in electric cars - or to store power in green power generation? Please read onto page 2 to continue...