#7 - Improving Lithium-Ion Batteries

For those that use a Mac, you probably have to charge the laptop every six-seven hours.  But what if you only had to charge it once every three days?  In fact, what if all battery operated products lasted ten times longer than they do today?  A team at Northwestern University has found such a solution to improving the way lithium-ion batteries store and use energy.  By using an atom-thick layer of silicone grapheme to encapsulate the lithium, as opposed to carbon, the research team has found that they can at not only improve the capacity but also the charge speed of today's lithium-ion batteries. The details of the invention can be found on the Northwestern University website here.

Now the implications of this invention will not “put a dent in the universe,” but it is still pretty significant. All of our mobile products are limited by the charge with which they can maintain. Because of this, most cell phones can’t hold a charge longer than two days and tablets and laptops more than ten and seven hours, respectively.  This means that we must always be close to a power supply or risk running out of power for our electronic devices. The NWU invention allows us to be less dependent on a local power supply which provides users with greater freedom and pushes the boundaries of smaller battery designs and more remote utilization of devices.

The future certainly holds more in regard to better batteries, but for now, it gets a little bit better.