
Silicon nanotube lithium-ion battery stores 10x more power, lasts 6000 charges - evo_9
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/129299-silicon-nanotube-lithium-ion-battery-stores-10-times-more-power-lasts-6000-charges
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chrisacky
This isn't the first time that I've read some amazing claim about dramatically
improving the efficiency of batteries. Heck, I'm sure it's not even the tenth
time. But we're still yet to see any amazing advances.

These kind of things make it sound like we can catapult the technology by a
factor of ten, but the truth is that we will most likely just end up pigeon
stepping our way forward slowly.

Don't get me wrong, because this is still very exciting, but just ask yourself
the question... is this the first time you have read an article about improved
battery efficiency that has been developed by researchers?

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StavrosK
Sensationalistic title: The article says the increase is only 2x, but they
_believe_ they can get it up to 10x eventually somehow _maybe_.

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ianterrell
My reading is that it's sensationalistic in that they haven't actually built a
10x battery, only an anode that can power it.

It does seem, however, that the 10x number is accurate (in fact, I don't see
any 2x notes anywhere in the article).

 _almost every lithium-ion battery uses a graphite (carbon) anode, which has a
specific capacity of 400 mAh per gram. ... Yi Cui’s team, however, has
successfully built a double-walled silicon nanotube anode that has a capacity
of around 4,000 mAh per gram._

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StavrosK
It says:

> The next step is to simplify the production of these nanotubes [...] and
> then to build an actual battery with double the energy density of current
> lithium-ion batteries. This might seem like a humble goal after saying that
> silicon anodes can increase power density by 10 times, but as we mentioned,
> the electrolyte and cathode are also important.

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sgt
I've only got one thing to say: Now we're talking!

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miahi
We'll talk after we see these in production. With affordable prices.

