The Chemistry student from the University of California Irvine, Mya Le Thaicould have solved one of the great problems of used batteries. She has discovered, a little by intuition and a little by perseverance, the eternal battery. May recharge infinite times.
Rechargeable batteries are growing in number as the number of electric cars and wireless devices increases. But they have a big problem. The number of recharges is finite, and when the cycle is complete, they must be discarded. The used batteries they are difficult to recycle, and very polluting.
If there was a eternal batterythat could reload infinite timesit would never need to be replaced, thus significantly reducing pollution and waste from used electric batteries.
An eternal battery with infinite recharges
By their very chemical nature, batteries only maintain their charging capacity a finite number of reloads. Depending on the materials used, it can be recharged 1,000, 3,000, up to 7,000 or 8,000 times. But past that number, the battery will die.
Experts have spent years experimenting with new materials to reduce these limitations. One of the fields of study is gold nanocable batteries. These nanocables son thousands of times finer than a human hairhighly conductive and with a great capacity to transfer and store electrons.
The problem, as you may have deduced, is that due to its small size, they are very fragile. After a few battery recharges, they end up breaking down.
This is where the chemistry studenta from the University of California Irvine, Mya Le Thai. looking for a way to strengthen nanowiressprayed them with a layer of manganese dioxide. He then wrapped the whole in a electrolyte formed by a gel similar to plexiglass. What I didn’t expect to get is a mix that, working together, makes gold nanowires unbreakable. You can see it in the opening video of the news.
For three months he subjected this gold nanowire battery to continuous charges and recharges. After 200,000 rechargesthe battery was still intact, without losing capacity. A standard battery barely lasts 5,000 or 6,000 recharges. Mya Le Thai had invented the eternal battery.
The most promising thing about this experiment is that this technique can be applied to conventional lithium-ion batteries which we use now. From a battery to a mobile battery, or a car battery. So the prospects are really good.
The eternal battery That recharge infinite times it’s here. At least in the lab. If you manage to apply the method to the real world, practically it would end the problem of the used batteriesBecause they would last a lifetime. Will they reach users soon?
