SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the it-keeps-going-and-going-and-going-and-going-and-going.... dept.
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.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday October 29 2015, @06:43PM
My first cell phone would last a week to ten days on standby. Good luck getting much more than a day with current phones.
Yes, my first phone sat unused for 2-3 weeks at a time as well, and I don't miss it. First is because all those "new applications to drain the battery" are applications that make my phone a lot more useful as a communications device. Second is because when that 2-3 weeks actually did end, it was typically in the middle of a work day leaving me phoneless during a critical time. For the longest time I actually had the habit of buying an extra charger with my phone just because I was too silly to charge it at night. Third is that even though I could wait that long in between charges, the talk time was nowhere near as long as I have now. I regularly have 3-4 hour chats on my current smartphone and still have enough left-over battery to stay on until after-hours, I don't recall ever having a call last more than 2 back in ye good ol' days of cell phone technology.
I really don't get why standby time is such a BFD. If I could get that sort of standby time AND get all my email notifications etc, then hell yeah I'd be excited.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈