Battery could last forever as student made a discovery

Images by UCI News

As technology continue to achieve what human thought were impossible, it’s certain that the future will be totally different from the world we are currently living in. A revolution of battery for the future is here as UCI researchers invented a technology that could change the way future batteries are made. In your wildest imagination, would you ever thought a battery can lasts forever, talking of powering your home or car with it? Well, dedication have attracted luck that can pay off through amazing innovations with huge impacts on future energy consumption.

A Chemistry student Mya Le Thai has accidentally developed a technology that could potentially allow a battery to last forever once fully developed. This was accidentally discovered during her doctoral at the University of California, Irvine according to Designboom website. Nanowire-based battery material that can be recharged unlimited times, brings us a step closer to a battery that would never need replacement. Mya who was playing around with various materials in the lab made this discovery after she coated a set of gold nanowires with a very thin gel layer. By encasing the wires in this thin gel, the filaments of the capacitor retain their properties under hundreds of thousands of charges.

The UCI researchers solved this problem by coating a gold nanowire in a manganese dioxide shell which they wrapped and assembled in an electrolyte made of a Plexiglas-like gel. The combination become reliable and resistant to failure, following the technical idea that Mya Le Thai has invented. As a result, the prototype that the team developed endured close to about 200,000 recharge cycles in a period of three months. No power or capacity loss was detected and no fracturing of any nanowires. 

According to Reginald Penner, the Chairman of UCI’s Chemistry Department, as quoted by Designboom website, ‘That was crazy.’‘Because these things typically die in dramatic fashion after 5,000 or 6,000 or 7,000 cycles at most.’

 According to Mya Le Thai, as quoted by Designboom website, ‘The coated electrode holds its shape much better, making it a more reliable option.’ ‘This research proves that a nanowire-based battery electrode can have a long lifetime and that we can make these kinds of batteries a reality.’

The study was conducted in coordination with the Nanostructures for Electrical Energy Storage Energy Frontier Research Center at the University of Maryland, with funding from the Basic Energy Sciences division of the U.S. Department of Energy.

Project Info:

Developers: Researchers at the University of California, Irvine (UCI)

Invented By: Chemistry student Mya Le Thai

Edited by MJ for Buildace Magazine