Rechargeable battery invented by College Student has rechargeable life of 400 years?

[ccs46]

https://www.good.is/articles/nanobatteries-last-forever?utm_source=Seeker&utm_medium=FB&utm_campaign=Share

For those who cannot goto the website or are behind firewalls:

There’s an old saying that luck happens when preparation meets opportunity. There’s no better example of that than a recent discovery at the University of California, Irvine by doctoral student Mya Le Thai. After playing around in the lab she made a discovery that could lead to a rechargeable battery that lasts up to 400 years. That means longer-lasting laptops and smartphones and fewer lithium ion batteries piling up in landfills.

A team of researchers at UCI had been experimenting with nanowires for potential use in batteries, but found that over time the thin, fragile wires would break down and crack after too many charging cycles. A charge cycle is when a battery goes from completely full to completely empty and back to full again. But one day, on a whim, Thai coated a set of gold nanowires in manganese dioxide and a Plexiglas-like electrolyte gel. “She started to cycle these gel capacitors, and that’s when we got the surprise,” said Reginald Penner, chair of the university’s chemistry department. “She said, ‘this thing has been cycling 10,000 cycles and it’s still going.’ She came back a few days later and said ‘it’s been cycling for 30,000 cycles.’ That kept going on for a month.”

Thai’s discovery is mind blowing because the average laptop battery lasts 300 to 500 charge cycles. The nanobattery developed at UCI made it though 200,000 cycles in three months. That would extend the life of the average laptop battery by about 400 years. The rest of the device would have probably gone kaput decades before the battery, but the implications for a battery that that lasts hundreds of years are pretty startling. “The big picture is that there may be a very simple way to stabilize nanowires of the type that we studied,” Penner said. “If this turns out to be generally true, it would be a great advance for the community.” Not bad for just fooling around in the laboratory.

Could this finally be the death of big battery?  I predict they will somehow try and hide this.

Perhaps Dave could do a video on this? Proving or disproving how it/how it could work/s?


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[edy]

Assuming the article is correct, all they have is a device which doesn't degrade over time. It will cycle and cycle for "400 years" by picking up and releasing charge. Great. So can a really well made capacitor. But what is the capacity of the battery, and how much current can it deliver?

Capacitor-style storage semiconductors for memory, solid stage storage and microprocessors can also cycle billions of times without showing any sign of degradation. Sure, they store a minuscule amount of charge... only enough to hold a "0" or "1" to be read later. But that doesn't mean they can provide much power.

So the question remains, this battery can cycle... but what kind of capacity can it store? Assuming it is good enough, then the question is can they ramp up production to levels that bring costs down and will the characteristics be useful for most devices.

[suicidaleggroll]

These kinds of articles are mostly useless, just click-bait.  Until you know the energy density and manufacturability of it, there's no real point.

I'm much more excited about this:
http://news.mit.edu/2016/lithium-metal-batteries-double-power-consumer-electronics-0817

Double the energy density of lithium ion, and manufacturable with existing equipment and processes.

[MosherIV]

Yawn, read about so many so called break throughs in battery technology it is boring. 

There are many hurdles to get through before it even gets near a comercial product.
Does the technology have battery capacity to match or better existing technologies?
The first is proof the technology is viable for consumer grade batteries.
Then they have to figure out how to productionise the manufacturing of the battery.
Safety testing.

The list goes on.

[System Error Message]

super capacitors may be the next battery instead as dont they have lots of cycle life?

[Dubbie]

Yes, an enormous cycle life. However, terrible energy density.
you'd need a fanny pack full of them to power your phone.

[System Error Message]

no need. you can have capacitor banks in your roof under the solar. Sure the density sucks but they arent heavy so wherever you can fit them works.

[Bud]

It is another female university student with another revolutionary idea. Good thing Walt Mossberg left WSJ, otherwise it could become another uBeam. BTW, does Mark Cuban know about this?   

[AndyC_772]

Q: Why did you replace your last phone?

A: Because the built-in, non-replaceable battery no longer held a charge.

Phone manufacturers *love* the fact that batteries die after a couple of years ago. There's no possible way they'd adopt a new battery technology that doesn't.

[Halcyon]

super capacitors may be the next battery instead as dont they have lots of cycle life?

Didn't someone do a car battery replacement thing using caps instead?

[tszaboo]

Another Chinese/Taiwaneese university student in 'merica will revolutionise the battery industry with nanotechnology, and it can be charged by 100C, it has coulombic efficiency of 99.9999% and it is made out of dog poo, which is avaliable in large quantity. They claim that production can be as soon as 2025+e^x, they just need to figure out how to scale it. It is nanotechnology. It does not scale.

How many articles did we have with the same claims?

[amyk]

Q: Why did you replace your last phone?

A: Because the built-in, non-replaceable battery no longer held a charge.

Phone manufacturers *love* the fact that batteries die after a couple of years ago. There's no possible way they'd adopt a new battery technology that doesn't.

This, exactly. Even if they existed, they will be "cost-engineered" so they don't actually last so long. Look what happened to LED lighting, for example.

[Delta]

no need. you can have capacitor banks in your roof under the solar. Sure the density sucks but they arent heavy so wherever you can fit them works.

Please post some photos of your solar / supercap installation, sounds interesting!  When did you install it?

[System Error Message]

no need. you can have capacitor banks in your roof under the solar. Sure the density sucks but they arent heavy so wherever you can fit them works.

Please post some photos of your solar / supercap installation, sounds interesting!  When did you install it?

i dont have solar, its just a suggestion for those who may have the space unused to reduce load on batteries.

[NottheDan]

Q: Why did you replace your last phone?

A: Because the contract was up and they offered me a shiny new model.

FTFY

The vast majority of people replace their phones before the battery dies on them.