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Silicon Nanowire Battery Last Ten Times longer Then Other Silicon Shapes Battery

Significant breakthrough was found in a research led by Yi Cui, Assistant professor of materials science and engineering in Stanford University. This major breakthrough regards to extraordinary improvement of the storage capacity of Lithium-Ion batteries, also known as Li-Ion battery.

Li-ion battery is the type of batteries that are used to power laptops, MP3 players, video cameras, mobile phones etc'. Therefore this new development regards to most of us, the batteries based electrical devices users.

With current use of li-ion battery, the electrical storage capacity is limited by the amount of lithium held on the battery's anode, typically made of carbon. Silicon though, has much higher capacity but there is a catch. When silicon is used in a battery (instead of carbon) while it absorbs the positively charged lithium atoms it swells and it shrinks while it is being used. These silicon volume changes, while being recharged and used grinds the battery performance.

The Stanford researches found a way to overcome this silicon drawback. The way Yi Cui and his research team found to beat this silicon size and volume changes is through nanotechnology. A forest of microscopic silicon nanowires stores the lithium. When the silicon nanowires absorb the lithium, their volume grow to be four times bigger. With this nanotechnology and method of the silicon shape, the silicon is not collapsing but it maintains its size when the lithium atoms are being positively charged and when being electrically discharged when used.

This technology breakthrough will have a major impact since it can be implemented in many appliances based on batteries from small devices like laptops, MP3 players etc' to electric cars and electrical devices and systems that use solar power to charge batteries.

The breakthrough is described in a paper called "High-performance lithium battery anodes using silicon nanowires" written by Yi Cui and his research team, published online at Nature Nanotechnology (www.nature.com).

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