New Lithium Ion Anode Promises Better Battery Performance, Longer Life

Posted 03/17/2010 at 5:16am | by Pulkit Chandna

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A hunt for lithium-ion batteries is likely to reveal quite a few of them inside a standard home, with a host of gadgets tapping into them these days. In fact, Li-ion batteries are gaining ground in other key industries, including hybrid automobiles and alternative energy. Now, a new breakthrough promises Li-ion batteries with vastly improved performance.

Researchers at Georgia Institute of technology have devised a new "bottom-up" self-assembly technique to overcome technical difficulties that had rendered more efficient silicon-based anodes impractical. The current crop of batteries only feature anodes made from graphite.

But the new technique uses “nanotechnology to fine-tune its materials properties,” allowing silicon-based anodes to be  more stable inside the battery, and thereby paving the way for “a ten-fold capacity improvement over graphite.”  Not only will the new technique improve the storage capacity of Li-ion batteries manifold, but such batteries will also last much longer.

"Development of a novel approach to producing hierarchical anode or cathode particles with controlled properties opens the door to many new directions for lithium-ion battery technology," said Gleb Yushin, an assistant professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "This is a significant step toward commercial production of silicon-based anode materials for lithium-ion batteries."

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