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."
As technology enthusiasts we sometimes forget that not everyone is caught up in our never ending state of gadget lust, and the law of averages has mainstream consumers driving up the age of most hardware found in the wild. According to industry analysts’ quoted by the 
