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Researchers Create Technology to Produce Lighter, Long-lasting Batteries from Silicon

posted by cmn32480 on Thursday October 29 2015, @05:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the it-keeps-going-and-going-and-going-and-going-and-going.... dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

Zhongwei Chen, a chemical engineering professor at Waterloo, and a team of graduate students have created a low-cost battery using silicon that boosts the performance and life of lithium-ion batteries. Their findings are published in the latest issue of Nature Communications .

Waterloo's silicon battery technology promises a 40 to 60 per cent increase in energy density, which is important for consumers with smartphones, smart homes and smart wearables.

The environmentally safe technology could also make dramatic improvements for hybrid and electric vehicles. The findings could mean an electric car may be driven up to 500 kilometres between charges and the smaller, lighter batteries may significantly reduce the overall weight of vehicles.

Current lithium-ion batteries normally use graphite anodes. The Waterloo engineers found that silicon anode materials have a much higher capacity for lithium and are capable of producing batteries with almost 10 times more energy.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 29 2015, @06:32PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 29 2015, @06:32PM (#256154)
    You can do that easily with current phones. Use your smartphone like a dumb phone and you'll have the battery life of a dumb phone, probably even longer. My current smartphone will last at least a week on standby, and I think many other recent smartphones would do about as well. Just turn off GPS, wifi and mobile data, don't use it to take pictures/videos, watch videos or play games or have the screen on for much longer than you would on a normal dumb phone.

    I usually only charge my phone to 70% (to preserve overall battery lifespan) and with my normal usage throughout the day it only goes from 70% down to about 50+%, so even if I don't use it like a dumb phone it will last more than two days without a charge especially if I charge it to 100%. Continuous intensive usage (games, browsing etc) drains it much faster of course.

    Of course if you turn on wifi/mobile data and have apps like Google's Android Device Manager or Whatsapp or Facebook enabled your battery life could go down much faster - 2-3% or more an hour on my phone. Obviously battery life will go down faster if your phone has to keep reporting to Google/NSA/CIA where it is and also transfer other data to/fro Whatsapp/Facebook etc.