While gadgets and portable electronics get thinner and smaller, lighter and cheaper every year, the race for the invention of a 'super-battery' continues and is much awaited.
The iPhone 6s features a 3D touch screen and ultrabooks are thin and powerful. A new smartwatch has more computing power than the Apollo moon landing spacecraft. However, despite all these amazing innovations, there remains the lithium-ion batteries they run on-that have not changed very much since Sony started selling them in 1991.
As related by The Guardian, Clare Grey of Cambridge University's department of chemistry who has been studying how batteries function for almost 20 years explains that batteries "don't suck"; us users just have unrealistic expectations of batteries. It is inherent to any device that it uses a lot of energy.
On the other hand, researchers at the University of Cambridge do not give up and see the possibility of the invention of the 'super battery' in the form of lithium-air battery. The new test battery could prove an important stepping stone in the development of this essential technology.
Previous tests have already known the wonders of how lithium-air or lithium-oxygen battery can hold up to 10 times the charge of today's lithium-ion packs. Nonetheless, the Cambridge University team's test overcame some of the practical challenges that had previously hampered lithium-air technology's development. The new battery built by Cambridge University used a 'fluffy' carbon electrode made from graphene. It has definitely higher capacity, better efficiency and improved stability. The team also changed the chemical mix from earlier versions of lithium-air batteries to prevent degradation over time.
Though the test has not solved all the problems inherent to battery chemistry, the reuls may pave the way for further discoveries.
As for the bad news: this technology is still a decade or more away. The demonstration battery produced by the scientists still needs pure oxygen in order to charge-not something many of us a have a ready supply of. Furthermore, lots of research and experimentation will be done first.
