Sunday Times 2
Pomegranate power: Fruit’s design used to create batteries
An electrode designed like a pomegranate could dramatically boost the battery life of gadgets, researchers have revealed.
Stanford researcher developed the new electrode with the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
They say it could soon find its way into gadgets, making them last far longer than current batteries which degrade over time. ‘While a
The interior of a pomegranate inspired the new battery design (Reuters)
couple of challenges remain, this design brings us closer to using silicon anodes in smaller, lighter and more powerful batteries for products like cell phones, tablets and electric cars,’ said Yi Cui, an associate professor at Stanford and SLAC who led the research, reported today in Nature Nanotechnology.
‘Experiments showed our pomegranate-inspired anode operates at 97 percent capacity even after 1,000 cycles of charging and discharging, which puts it well within the desired range for commercial operation.’
Graduate student Nian Liu and postdoctoral researcher Zhenda Lu used a microemulsion technique common in the oil, paint and cosmetic industries to gather silicon yolk shells into clusters, and coated each cluster with a second, thicker layer of carbon.
These carbon rinds hold the pomegranate clusters together and provide a sturdy highway for electrical currents.
© Daily Mail, London