Battery Booster

Introduction

A new electrode material can make batteries run for longer. Negative electrodes of present day batteries are made of graphite, whose layers can store one lithium ion per carbon atom. The new material, lithium borosilicide, consists of boron and silicon atoms connected tetrahedrally, like carbon atoms in graphite. But unlike graphite it has channels within the tetrahedral structure. These channels provide 10- times more sites for lithium ion storage than conventional graphite layer does and, thus, highly increase the chargestoring capacity of lithium ion batteries. This could pave the way for laptops and mobile phones that run for days on a single charge.

Source

Down to Earth, July 2013