Nanowire-based battery materials can be charged hundreds of thousands of times

Battery consumption has been too fast, and it is not very pleasant for many products. If the battery can be replaced without replacement, it would be perfect. Recently, researchers in the United States have found that nanowire-based battery materials can repetitively charging hundreds of thousands of times. It is expected to achieve a battery that requires almost no replacement.

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) found that the "wire" involved in the deposition of nanowire-based charge storage mechanisms is only a thin nanowire. Form presentation). According to the researchers, this is a pure gold nanowire with a surface coated or embedded with manganese dioxide (MnO2). The assembly is basically a capacitor that forms a charge storage capacitor between the interleaved arrays of nanowires and is suspended in an electrolytic medium.

In the same material, the use of nanowires provides higher charge storage than thin films. Because nanowires are thousands of times thinner than human hair, they are highly conductive and have a large surface area for electronic storage and transmission. The pure gold nanowires are about 240 nm wide and 35 nm thick; the outer shell thickness is between about 143 and 300 nm. According to previous research work, these filaments are extremely fragile and are not easily maintained for repeated discharge, charging or charge and discharge cycles. Therefore, a general lithium ion battery easily expands, becomes fragile, and finally causes cracking.

UCI researchers solved this problem by coating pure gold nanowires in a manganese dioxide shell and wrapping the assembly in an electrolyte made from a Plexiglas gel. This gel is a combination of polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) and lithium perchlorate (LiClO4: a source of lithium ions that form a lithium-ion battery) that is extremely reliable and less prone to failure.

Leading the study, Dr. MyaLeThai, a candidate for UCI, cycled the test electrodes up to 200,000 times in three months, without detecting any power or power loss, and without damaging any nanowires. The results of this study have been published in the latest issue of Energy Letters published by the American Chemical Society.

Reginald Penner, head of the UCI chemistry department, said, "Mya started with a fun attitude, completely coating the very thin gel on the surface and starting to charge and discharge. She found that it was only necessary to coat this on nanowire materials. The gel can recharge and discharge hundreds of thousands of times without losing any capacity."

He added, "This is really amazing. Because the battery usually goes through 5,000, 6,000 or 7,000 charge and discharge cycles, it will be completely broken and cannot be used." Structure used by UCI researchers in particular, high aspect ratio nanowires are used to expose or amplify any possible failure effects: however, they never appear.

Researchers believe that this gel will plasticize the metal oxides in the battery and give flexibility to prevent cracking.

“The coated electrode is more effective in maintaining its original shape, making it a more reliable choice,” says Thai. “This study confirms that nanowire battery electrodes have a longer lifespan, allowing us to truly achieve this length."

The study also collaborated with the University of Maryland's Energy Frontier Research Center's energy storage Nanostructures (NEES) program and was funded by the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Department of Basic Energy Sciences.

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