American scientists are developing the world’s smallest lithium-ion mobile batteries which could be ’small enough to pour out of a saltshaker’.
Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, are developing the next generation batteries, about which they say: “these tiny energy storage devices would be no bigger than a grain of sand”.
Research in Initial Stages: “We’re trying to achieve the same power densities, the same energy densities as traditional lithium ion batteries, but we need to make the footprint much smaller,” says Jane P. Chang, a UCLA professor of chemical engineering, who is designing one component of these batteries. She presented her work at the AVS 57th International Symposium and Exhibition held recently in at the Albuquerque Convention Centre in New Mexico. Basically, she is trying to create a battery that has the same energy density as a regular lithium ion battery but with the much smaller size. Chang and her UCLA team designed the electrolyte that allows electricity to flow between the battery’s electrodes. She coated well-ordered micro-pillars (nanowires) with electrolyte through a technology called atomic layer deposition, an atom-thick layer at a time. The nanowires she used had been made to maximize the surface-to-volume ratio, for increased energy density. As this research is still in its early stage, other components of these 3-D microbatteries, such as the electrodes, have also been developed, but they have yet to be assembled and integrated to make a functioning battery, before it hits the market.
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