Future Technology: Batteries

Mobile devices need power, and when it comes to electricity, LiPo is currently the most popular choice, but will it last? Researchers at UC Irvine have stumbled upon a battery technology which allows for a near infinite number of charging cycles without significant corrosion or decline in capacity.  They have currently put the prototype through 200,000 charge cycles and the hope is to bring batteries with this technology to market. Current battery technology allows for four to five figure charge cycles before the battery degrades to the point of being unsafe or not usable.These batteries therefore have the potential to last hundreds of times longer than current batteries.   This nanowire-based battery is highly conductive and features a large surface area for transferring electrons. The difference between this and previous attempts at nanowire based batteries is that these are coated with a manganese dioxide shell and encased in an electrolyte made of a plexiglas-like get. Explaining the concept of using nanowires to create batteries and the advances by this team:

"In the race to make more efficient batteries, scientists would like to back together tiny nanowire: strips of metal many times smaller than a human hair [...] Out team combined a gold core and a manganese dioxide shell to make our nano wires because it could hold more charge than a carbon nanowire could. [...] The manganese dioxide tended to separate from the gold nanowire when electricity passed through. We replaced the charge carrying part with a plexiglas called PMA and found that we could pass electricity through these wires hundreds of thousands of times and in three months we charged these wires constantly"

Sources: news.uci.edu/research/all-powered-up/ popsci.com/researchers-accidentally-make-batteries-last-400-times-longer#page-2