Superior Anode For Lithium-Ion Batteries Developed 77
RogerRoast writes "The anode is a critical component for storing energy in lithium-ion batteries. The Berkeley Lab (D.O.E) has designed a new kind of anode that can absorb eight times the lithium of current designs, and has maintained its greatly increased energy capacity after over a year of testing and many hundreds of charge-discharge cycles. According to the research published in Advanced Materials they used a tailored polymer that conducts electricity and binds closely to lithium-storing silicon particles, even as they expand to more than three times their volume during charging and then shrink again during discharge."
Re:Jaded (Score:5, Insightful)
I am becoming jaded with such articles.
What's annoying are all these material science articles where someone has made a new material at lab-scale and this is immediately extrapolated to commercial products Real Soon Now. About one of those appears each week. This is one of the saner ones, though.
The Great New Material usually turns out to have some problem. It costs too much to make, it's too brittle, it won't work when hot or cold, it's too hazardous, or it has a short lifespan in the intended application. Sometimes this is overcome, but most of the time, not.
There's nothing wrong with having articles about this stuff, but writers should be clear on where they are in the range between "theoretical chemistry indicates this molecule would be insanely great" and "the product is shipping in volume".