Researchers Accidentally Make Batteries That Could Last A Lifetime (computerworld.com) 197
Reader Socguy writes: A typical Lithium-ion battery breaks down badly between 5000-7000 cycles. Researchers at the University of California may have discovered a simple way to build a Lithium battery that can withstand 100,000+ cycles. This was a serendipitous discovery as the researcher was playing around with the battery and coated it in a thin gel layer. The researchers believe the gel plasticizes the metal oxide in the battery and gives it flexibility, preventing cracking.Dave Gershgorn, reporting for Popular Science: Instead of lithium, researchers at UC Irvine have used gold nanowires to store electricity, and have found that their system is able to far outlast traditional lithium battery construction. The Irvine team's system cycled through 200,000 recharges without significant corrosion or decline. However, they don't exactly know why. "We started to cycle the devices, and then realized that they weren't going to die," said Reginald Penner, a lead author of the paper. "We don't understand the mechanism of that yet." The Irvine battery technology uses a gold nanowire, no thicker than a bacterium, coated in manganese oxide and then protected by a layer of electrolyte gel. The gel interacts with the metal oxide coating to prevent corrosion. The longer the wire, the more surface area, and the more charge it can hold. Other researchers have been experimenting with nanowires for years, but the introduction of the protective gel separates UC Irvine's work from other research.Also from the report, "Penner suggests that a more common metal, like nickel, could replace the gold if the technology catches on."
Who cares? (Score:2, Interesting)
It's not like this technology will ever make its way into my devices. Greedy bastards will patent it and demand huge fees to license the technology. It's also not good for the greedy bastards running businesses. The batteries won't break, which means they can't compel people to buy new stuff. Greedy fuckers will make sure this never makes its way into anything I own.
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An understandable reaction, but it's not likely things will work out that way. Makers of current battery types will have to shift quickly; but just think of all the devices that use batteries, and that can now be made so very much better!
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In case people don't spot the sarcasm, decades ago researchers discovered out how to make cheap lightbulbs that last forever, but makers collectively realized that it would kill their business and decided not to make them.
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Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
Everybody knows how to make bulbs that are cheap and last forever. What's hard is making them so that they are simultaneously bright and energy-efficient and still last forever. If you make them brighter by making the filament thinner so that they burn hotter, it makes them more fragile. If you make them brighter by adding more filaments in parallel, they use more power. Bright, energy-efficient, robust—choose (at most) two.
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Can you link me to one that is "bright and robust"- lasts a lifetime, is bright, but isn't efficient? I'd definitely like at least one bulb like that.
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...and if you can't find that one, how about a dim bulb that lasts forever, like that firestation bulb that has been going a hundred years or whatever? If there's no "bright and robust", just link me "robust and efficient". Or, really, just "robust".
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're using the "firehouse" bulb as your definition of "robust" then many incandescents made in the last 50 years would meet that standard.
Lifetime is approximately proportional to light output ^ -4.
The firehouse bulb is a 4 Watt bulb.
So if you took a 'normal' 40W bulb, and reduced the voltage to make it run at 4W, you'd end up with 10000x the 'normal' life of a 40W bulb (i.e. millions of hours).
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"Robust and efficient" would be an LED.
Alone an LED is robust, but in my kitchen ceiling, 1/3rd of the LED light bulbs (3 of 9) have failed in 2 years. This is because while LEDs are robust, the ultra cheap, crappy switch mode voltage converter in the bulb base is not.
Wire the lighting circuits of homes with 12V DC and you could have robust LED light fixtures. The robustness claims of line level LED lightbulbs are fraudulent.
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Alone an LED is robust, but in my kitchen ceiling, 1/3rd of the LED light bulbs (3 of 9) have failed in 2 years.
You either got a bad batch, or you have really crappy mains power. I installed more than 80 bulbs throughout my house three years ago, and since then, only one has failed.
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The "lighting circuits at 12V DC" sounds like a terrific idea. Outside the entertainment unit and the kitchen, there isn't a whole lot of business for 110V throughout most of a house these days. Lighting would be *better* with 12V plugs, as you note. What else do bedrooms and so forth need? Alarm clocks and radios? 12V is fine.
I can see a possibility coming where houses still have 110V, but a more limited number of plugs, maybe one per room...but a couple of 12V/USB plugs on every wall that would be lo
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Zoning laws require 110VAC sockets every few feet. It's going to be a while before that requirement goes away.
Stereos, large screen TVs, electric blankets, fans draw enough current to make 12 Vdc a poor choice. Window air conditioners are already marginal at 110 V.
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That's why I specified 12V DC for lighting circuits. They are supposed to be on separate circuits from plugs. So why not? They would make LED lighting much more sensible.
220-240V AC is much more practical for power delivery than 110V. Ring mains are more robust and safer. But I don't see the US getting over its stupid electrical standards any time soon.
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LED? (Score:3)
These "75w" equivalent are so much brighter than the incandescents they replaced, we keep them dimmed all the time.
Based on the ridiculous California electric rates, my ROI is something like 9 months (since my wife doesn't seem to know that the switch can be put in the off position...)
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wife doesn't seem to know that the switch can be put in the off position...
I dunno, sounds like that might be a lot of wear and tear on the switch...
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Thankfully the switches are now cheaper than the bulbs :)
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I have a few Philips dimmable LEDs that were crazy expensive. The _outside_ temperature goes to the limit of the capacitor(encased in some material) on the inside.
I suspect that on many LEDS, the operating temperatures will kill these capacitors. I have a few other LED's with SMD mounted capacitors(with much higher operational temperatures), they are built for 12v G4 replacements and I have a power supply for those that feeds them DC instead of AC. so it will be interesting to see how long they last, they h
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I've had bulbs for going on 8 years without failure. LEDs are more than reliable enough. I've even bought off brand, Feit from CostCo without issue.
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I was moving a bit in the past - every time I moved into a new place, I replaced the bulbs with energy-efficient ones.
Never replaced any of the energy efficient bulbs until I moved to my current place, where an underground metro line cause minute vibrations to shake the bulbs ever-so-slightly loose and get a bad connection momentarily (this also kill regular bulbs). Even then, only replaced 2 (and have 1 dead one, all cheap IKEA store-brand), while I have several others going fine for close to a decade.
Past
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I don't think Google's behind it.
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decades ago researchers discovered out how to make cheap lightbulbs that last forever, but makers collectively realized that it would kill their business and decided not to make them.
That's dumb. It would be smarter to sell them at a hefty premium.
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citation needed.
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yes, the trusts were genuinely out of control back then. at least many of the robber barons endowed universities and other cultural institutions.
It's interesting that today's LEDs will last for 10+ years. Heck, even CFLs will last 5+. Speaking of CFLs, I went to heck and back trying to find a neutral white CFL color. The original ones were the bright white flourescent, made you feel like you were in an ER. These are 5000K lights. Then there are the mellow white/yellows, also called "warm light", also called
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link 1 [permies.com]
link 2 [priceonomics.com]
the second link talks about a supposed 'cartel' but says there's no evidence supporting that it was formed to introduce planned obsolescence.
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The story I've heard, I've just put in the back of my mind as just that a story and rumor with no proof any of it happened.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
There's your proof. On broadcast TV news, at that.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing is... greed doesn't work that way.
Yes, they may try and hold it as long as possible to increase value, but note that something that sits in your vault, unused, doesn't make any money. And if they patent it, the patent does run out eventually. They need to do *something* with it.
More likely, it becomes used in very, very expensive applications where they can charge an arm and a leg for it. I'm thinking military equipment as a good target.
Eventually, though, unless it is uneconomical to mass produce, it will make its way into other things. Those who are greedy may well try and use older tech to keep it breaking, but someone who wants to break into the market, or someone even greedier is going to use it to differentiate their product in order to eat the lunch of the people using the inferior tech.
Note that it is possible for the better tech to be stopped, possibly through suggesting it is not safe (FUD) or some sort of paid-for government regulation, but greed by itself, won't stop this.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well If I happen to own a massive industry that sells batteries that go bad and have to be replaced every 5 years.....and someone comes up with a battery that doesn't need to be replaced it would most definitely make me a lot of money to buy the patent for a few million dollars and sit on it until it ran out and keep selling the batteries that have to be replaced.
This is just one of the reasons that patents really ought to be use it or lose it.
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This is just one of the reasons that patents really ought to be use it or lose it.
Yes, that is a very good suggestion.
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Well If I happen to own a massive industry that sells batteries that go bad and have to be replaced every 5 years.....and someone comes up with a battery that doesn't need to be replaced it would most definitely make me a lot of money to buy the patent for a few million dollars and sit on it until it ran out and keep selling the batteries that have to be replaced.
Do you have a citation of a single instance where a company purchased a patent, sat on it, and then when the patent finally expired the market exploded for that thing?
You guys are sounding like those patent conspiracy wanks that dont even know that patents are public information (ie, "the oil industry purchased a patent for insanely efficient engine and has locked it away forever" nut fools)
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Chevron's purchase of the patent on NiMH vehicle batteries is the closest example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Of course by the time the patent ran out, NiMH batteries were already obsolete. Luckily it was a short-lived technology in terms of usefulness. Imagine if the patent were on Li-ion vehicle batteries instead.
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> Of course by the time the patent ran out, NiMH batteries were already obsolete.
Far from obsolete. We don't see them in smartphones and tablets/PDAs or laptops any more because they do not match the power densitity of Li-Ion batteries (remember, power density is king!) but for consumer replaceble secondary (rechargable) cells they are only growing in popularity, especially now that self-discharge rates come close to matching Li-ion cells' charge retention and aren't too far off from primary cells in thi
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Why don't we see Li-Ion rechargable batteries from Enloop, Energizer, or (ugh) Ray-o-Vac, etc. but only Chinese vendors?
I thought it was because the voltages were wrong? Energizer/Duracell sells disposable lithium. I don't think liability can be a serious problem, since literally every person I know keeps a lithium battery in their pocket or purse now - and they are allowed on airplanes.
Kentli sells Lithium rechargeables at 1.5v by including a built-in buck converter. Neat trick, but it seems awkward.
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As MightyYar said, the reason we don't have Li-ion rechargeable AA/AAA/C/D/9v batteries is because the voltages would be wrong simply due to the chemistry differences. Alkaline cells are 1.5V and lithium cells are 3.6V so the two will never align nicely for any combination of batteries you're likely to see in a consumer device.
Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Interesting)
In the early years of electricity light bulb makers realized how to make light bulbs last for up to 5 years or longer. However someone else quickly realized that this would mean people would only buy light bulbs every X years as replacements. So a light bulb standard was introduced and passed through congress that effectively limited the lifespan of the light bulb to 1 year. Thus guarantee that people would purchase the product many times.This is called planned obsolescence and exists to this day because of the Phoebus cartel.
links to proof IEEE: http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-... [ieee.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
So about patent expiration and things that get bigger when someone does not hold the patent any longer : drugs. And lets pick My favorite drug to talk about Viagra. Viagra started as a possible high blood pressure treatment, but the side effects were amazing as we all know, its patent was scheduled to expire in 2012. So Pfizer sold it for what it did best. Then it became profitable and they increased the price to 60 a pill and a minimum or 8 pills costs someone 500 USD or so. But if Pfizer can show Viagra is a treatment for more than what it was originally marketed for, they can issue a whole new patent for the drug. This is what drug manufacturers do to keep control of a drug and its profits. This is par for the course. Lucky for you and me this drug seems to have only two good usages, luckily i have high blood pressure ;-) And Pfizer extended the patent for the second use case to 2020.
So there is literally a market waiting to explode based on a patent expiring.
Case 2: cell phone modems. This technical patent expired around '99 and those companies selling beepers upgraded to selling cell phones. ... which was bad.
Case 3: K-cups
Case 4: 3D printing - the entire industry kick started in 2013 once the patents expired , and then in 2014 when most of the rest expired
Case 5: Kodak and the digital photography patent : (should be #1 but everyone studies this is college as one of the greatest mistakes )
case 6: home telephones: At&t used to lease telephones to people who paid for a home phone - thats why we all grew up with a phone that all looked the same in the 40's 50's 60's 70's and 80's. In the 80's however they were sued that it was unfair to hold the patent and make people pay for the phone... then all these new shaped phones came out... and the cords got longer which was great.. then they got tangled
These are the top ones that come to mind in 5 minutes if I actually gave it some thought I could probably come up with some good ones.
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>
These are the top ones that come to mind in 5 minutes if I actually gave it some thought I could probably come up with some good ones.
I have no evidence to back this up, but my assumption is that the sudden plethora of razor-by-mail companies selling at prices far below Gillette was the result of some related patent expiring. Otherwise, why now? They've been expensive for a long time.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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Yeah, but notice how real patents expire, and "scammer guy whose followers claim was shut down by evil industry" lasts forever? Who cares if they buy the patent and slow it down, it is still a giant advancement and will still make it to market, even if the patent-holder sits on it.
The reality is that battery tech is not developed by battery companies. The companies with their names on the batteries mostly are engineering and product development companies. The biggest name in battery technology is Panasonic,
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Moller Air Car is just around the corner!
Everyone will fly to the grocery store!
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it would most definitely make me a lot of money to buy the patent for a few million dollars and sit on it until it ran out and keep selling the batteries that have to be replaced.
No, it doesn't make sense to do that. The patent only gives you protection for 15 years, while you keep selling batteries at existing volume, at a small margin, whereas the superior batteries would give you a much bigger market and much higher margin. Sure, after a while you may have to look for a different business, but with a few billion of profit in the bank, there's a lot of opportunities.
University of California - Can't sit on patent (Score:2)
... buy the patent for a few million dollars and sit on it until it ran out ...
You can't. The people who made the discovery are at the University of California (UC). UC owns the patent. They don't sell, they license. They don't license to people who sit on it, you will lose your license, or at least any exclusivity. Matter of fact their policy is actually to favor small local companies. So if you are a giant national or multinational corp you have a disadvantage even licensing.
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With the use it or lose it....the big bad battery corp would see the inventor couldn't do it and just wait for the 'lose it' to happen and use it for free.
It's a tricky thing to get right.
Re: Who cares? (Score:2, Insightful)
The patent is very irrelevant to the Chinese. They will likely copy it and flood the market with them. Even if you are the copyright owner, you will need a lot of money to sue them and it is highly unlikely to win the trial.
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At $125 for a lifetime battery, there might even be a significant push for standardized sizes and sharing between devices. Like we had in the olden days!
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If you don't intend to replace them, why bother with standardized sizes? Design one to perfectly fit your phone/tablet/laptop and glue it stuck, really if batteries didn't lose capacity and fail after a few years it wouldn't be an issue.
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If you don't intend to replace them, why bother with standardized sizes? Design one to perfectly fit your phone/tablet/laptop and glue it stuck, really if batteries didn't lose capacity and fail after a few years it wouldn't be an issue.
We're not planing to replace the battery, but the phone/tablet/laptop. When a better appliance comes out, you pull your lifetime battery out of your old device and put it in your new device.
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The main application of this would likely be automotive manufacturing. For almost everything else, you're going to replace the device after a few years anyway, so unless the batteries are removable (which is by far the exception rather than the rule for rechargeable batteries), there's no real benefit to having the batteries last forever.
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Unless you are using some sort of Hippie All Open Hardware. The devices that most of us have come from companies with rather big pockets.
Apple, Samsung, Lenovo, Microsoft... Will pay those big usage fees for the ability to make their products with better advertised battery life and reliability.
As well the Electric Auto Market would love to have a long term Lithium battery. As most electric cars are still using less efficient batteries just because they cannot get the expected 10 years out of a Lithium Batt
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This right here. I would bet money that Elon Musk has already got someone looking into this.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
On the plus side, China doesn't really respect patents.
That has good and bad consequences, so let's play both sides.
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Which, to the point of the GP, second rate is better than literally nothing.
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Elon Musk should buy it out, patent it and make it available to anyone who asks, just like a lot of his other electric car patents.
Univ of Calif - So licensing reasonable ... (Score:5, Informative)
Greedy bastards will patent it and demand huge fees to license the technology ... Greedy fuckers will make sure this never makes its way into anything I own.
Wrong and Wrong.
As these researchers are part of the University of California system (UC), UC owns the patent. UC's policy for licensing considers the nature of the company seeking the license. Some preference is given to smaller local companies over large multinationals for instance. Also UC retains ownership, they only license. So there is no burying the technology problem.
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Tin Foil Hat Too Tight? (Score:2)
Greedy fuckers will make sure this never makes its way into anything I own.
I'm betting your grandfather believed that the automakers and Big Oil were surpressing the magic carburator that would take his Ford V-8 120 miles on a gallon of gas. Forgetting that great mileage means great sales for big sedans, pick-up trucks, sport cars, travel trailers, and other heavy weight or high performance vehicles and accessories.
New tech means new products. These new batteries will find their way into everything you own.
Searching Amazon.com for "lithium ion flashlight batteries" --- the most g
Euphemisms (Score:5, Funny)
"This was a serendipitous discovery as the researcher was playing around with the battery and coated it in a thin gel layer."
Translated: Scientist was watching porn at work, accidentally got some on the battery.
Re:Euphemisms (Score:4, Funny)
He got some porn on the battery?
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She accidentally a battery. The researcher who was playing with the batteries was UCI doctoral candidate Mya Le Thai, who made the batteries to last long time. (sorry, and congratulations)
this is why aliens liked gold (Score:2)
The right way to do research (Score:5, Insightful)
"This was a serendipitous discovery as the researcher was playing around with the battery and coated it in a thin gel layer".
Just like Fleming's discovery of penicillin. In each case, something "just happened"; and the researcher was knowledgeable and alert enough to spot the significance of an apparently irrelevant event.
We need a lot more of this kind of thing, and it is only likely to happen where researchers have an adequate amount of freedom to experiment and "play around". Perhaps Heinlein's "Long Range Foundation" was a bit extreme - funding only projects that are very ambitious, very far-out, and immensely expensive, and even then only on condition that no useful results are expect for a long time - but that's the true spirit of scientific research. "Cast your bread upon the waters..." Ironically, the greatest practical benefits come from research that does not aim for any practical benefits.
Re:The right way to do research (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The right way to do research (Score:5, Informative)
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka” but “That’s funny...”
—Isaac Asimov
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Fleming, however, ran a few tests, decided it wouldn't work in a human body, and shelved it. 20 years later another guy hauled it back out and did the dirty work of purifying it and testing it.
Re:The right way to do research (Score:4)
Fleming, however, ran a few tests, decided it wouldn't work in a human body, and shelved it. 20 years later another guy hauled it back out and did the dirty work of purifying it and testing it.
In fact Fleming established that penicillin was non-toxic to humans. He wasn't even the first person to publish on the subject: according to the Wikipedia entry,
"In 1897 a French physician, Ernest Duchesne at École du Service de Santé Militaire in Lyon, published a medical thesis entitled Contribution à l'étude de la concurrence vitale chez les micro-organismes : antagonisme entre les moisissures et les microbes (Contribution to the study of the vital competition in micro-organisms: antagonism between molds and microbes) in which he specifically studied the interaction between Escherichia coli and Penicillium glaucum".
All of this actually reinforces my main point, which is that scientists often stumble across unexpected properties that can be used to advantage. Precisely because the results are serendipitous, they usually don't take any decisive steps to make products or money out of their discoveries; nevertheless the discoveries have been made, and the door has been opened for someone more practically-minded (or money-minded) to follow up, then or later.
A battery that never needs to be thrown... (Score:2)
...I'm sure that's great news for Energizer and Duracell.
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Industry can't buy and bury this one ... (Score:4, Interesting)
My thought as well. We won't see this in our devices any time soon unless it comes from Elon Musk via Tesla.
Not true. The University of California (UC) owns this patent. They don't allow their patents to be buried by licensees. They also favor smaller and more local licensees. UC has a pretty good system wide policy and a dedicated staff to handle everything for faculty and student researchers. Doing a social good is part of their mindset. These are the same people that gave you BSD Unix without any real strings attached.
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Eh, this is a problem that can be easily solved by a freelance arson or a few enthusiastic thugs before the project even takes off.
Nothing outlasts an Energizer.
Obligatory. [afn.org]
Fluffy bunny won't last at UCI (Score:2)
I can see the new commercial for Energizer now: The pink fluffy Energizer bunny wearing a suit with wingtip shoes and a fedora beating a scientist, in a white lab coat, to death with a drum mallet in front of the sign at UC Irvine.
Soon after the bunny's arrival at UC Irvine you will find a pile of Coyote poo with pink fluff in it in front of the sign. UCI borders nature reserves and creek/river beds that are heavily trafficked by coyotes. They are frequently sighted around campus and adjoining neighborhoods.
Why am I so confused? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why am I so confused about this story?
Did they build a Lithium battery, or a gold battery?
Is it holding charge or chemical energy? (If it holds charge, is it a supercapacitor?)
The article linked in the OP isn't very clear either. They made a battery, not with an anode and a cathode, but with *two* cathodes.
Okay, the article states "this isn't a true battery". And it's just a wire loop embedded in PMMA.
WTF? Can I get those 10 minutes of my life back?
Re:Why am I so confused? (Score:5, Informative)
No, you can't get those 10 minutes back and you will spend even more time trying to sort this all out.
One minute summary:
It appears that they improved the wires that collect the electrons. (They tested this in a capacitor, not a battery)
The breakthrough is that they were able to use nanowires which have a large surface area (more efficient) but are normally very fragile. They coated them with "gel" which kept them from breaking.
This should lead to better batteries.
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Because it was written by a journalist. (One of those 'worthless' degrees).
Without knowing the energy-density of the battery (both volumetric and gravimetric) and the cost, it doesn't mean much - probably venture vultures looking for low-hanging cash.
Most Lithium batteries can be short cycled to greatly increase their cycle life. But with this paper it might be a capacitor?
A key battery specification is the cost/ (cycle-life x capacity). This tells you the cost of the power while assuming you can charge it
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If a battery is rechargeable, it has two cathodes and two anodes, though not at the same time.
Capacitor is a technical word, but battery might not be. A good enough capacitor would be a battery. No need to introduce engineering jargon as an attempt to understand the journalistic representation.
You could have preserved those minutes by not clicking the shit, and just commenting instead.
what type? (Score:5, Interesting)
the article is missing a lot of details.. lithium polymer? standard Lithium Ion? or the current best battery the LifePo4 that already has insane battery cycle life as well as extreme tolerance to being charged poorly so you don't need a special high cost charger.
Read the article.....
Ahh, this is not even a battery but a wire loop in acrylic.. Nothing to see here kids but hype.
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It's a wire in a gel as an electrode. That is a pretty significant advancement. Lithium electrodes tend to degrade because they fracture apart as they charge and discharge (the effect looks like they form hairs over time) - stopping that process means infinite charge cycles (assuming the electrolyte doesn't break down, but that has been solved for some time.)
What would Elon do? (Score:2)
Can Elon incorporate this discovery quickly enough into his Giga-Factory to make the Tesla 3 an assured success, where people don't worry about wear and tear on the battery?
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Maybe not inventing, but I bet he's already working on getting additional R&D spun up.
Elon, please put this in Model 3 (Score:3)
Gold nano-wires? (Score:5, Informative)
"Gold nanowires"? They are saying they coat them so they don't corrode but isn't one of the main properties for which gold is valued the fact that it is highly non-reactive and doesn't typically corrode? Plus I've never heard of wires being used as an energy storage medium, nano or otherwise. I'm certainly no expert in chemistry but Popular Science isn't usually where I go to for reliable information about the latest in battery research. If this were real I'd expect to see the research come from some sort of peer reviewed source.
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100,000 cycles (at least) (Score:5, Insightful)
Divide that by one charge every day for 365 days and that's 275 years of battery life.
Yes please.
Researcher now mysteriously missing... (Score:3)
Uh huh... "Insert" doctors jokes here... (Score:2, Offtopic)
"...playing around with the battery and coated it in a thin gel layer."
Exactly what was he doing with that battery anyway!
Silicon? (Score:2)
> Also from the report, "Penner suggests that a more common metal, like nickel, could replace the gold if the technology catches on."
What about Silicon? It is my understanding that this kind of tech is exactly what silicon needs to be viable, and silicon has up to 10x the storage capacity.
Contradiction (Score:2)
Penner suggests that a more common metal, like nickel, could replace the gold if the technology catches on.
An adventurous suggestion, having into account that :
We don't understand the mechanism of that yet.
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Re:Doesn't surprise me at all (Score:4, Informative)
Gold doesn't corrode, and it conducts well. Thus making it really good, and can last for a long time.
Copper will corrode, so after a few years of usage it could reduce in quality.