The conclusion about Li-ion batteries is not supported by the paper. The paper tests the electrodes in a capacitor configuration, not a Li-ion battery configuration. Li-ion battery electrodes are damaged more by the swelling caused by Li-ion diffusion into and out of the electrode than they are by the electromagnetic forces between electrodes.
It's hard to tell if the article is just confusing capacitors and batteries, or if the researchers consider using the coated nanowires in a capacitor configuration as a proof-of-concept for use in Li-Ion batteries.
From the article:
"All nanowire capacitors can be extended from 2000 to 8000 cycles to more than 100,000 cycles, simply by replacing a liquid electrolyte with a... gel electrolyte," the researchers wrote in their paper.
The result: commercial batteries that could last a lifetime in computers, smartphones, appliances, cars and spacecraft.
My takeaway is that nanowires like this are applicable both in capacitors and in batteries; they've determined a way to make them much more durable in capacitors and if they can duplicate that within batteries then it's going turn out to be an even larger discovery than it already is.
If they were actually working on this only for batteries, then presumably capacitors are simply a test methodology that allows them to test hundreds of thousands of cycles within a reasonable time period.
