Nanowire battery

A float battery is a type of lithium-ion battery invented by a team led by Dr. Yi Cui at Stanford University in 2007. The invention consists of replacing a traditional graphite anode battery with a stainless steel anode coated with silicon nanowire. Silicon, capable of holding 10 times more lithium than graphite, allows you to create a much higher energy density at the anode, thus reducing the mass of the battery. In the future, increasing the surface area of ​​the anode will speed up the process of charging and discharging.

Design

Initially, a study was conducted on traditional silicon anodes, but they were rejected due to the tendency of silicon to crack and grow in volume. Such an anode becomes inoperative, because in the process of working the cracks are filled with lithium. Nanowire is free from this flaw. According to Dr. Kyu, the batteries reached a tenfold charge density at the first charge and then stabilized at the level of eightfold density at subsequent charges. Since this is achieved only by improving the anode, it will be necessary to make an equivalent change in the cathode in order to obtain the maximum increase in energy storage density.

As expected, the commercialization of the invention will last until 2012. ^[1] During this time, the cost of storing the watt-hour energy will be the same or even less compared to conventional lithium-ion batteries. The next important stage - life cycle testing - should be completed soon, the group expects to achieve at least a thousand cycles per battery.

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