Battery life is always a concern when it comes to buying a phone. But this student from the University of California in Irvine might have solved the problem when she accidentally developed a rechargeable battery that might last for 400 years!
In 2016, a former PhD student Mya Le Thai was trying to find a way to design better nanowires for use in normal rechargeable batteries.
Thai was at that time researching the properties of nanowires made of gold and embedded in a special electrolyte gel.
While doing some tests in the lab, Thai made an astonishing discovery when she found out that the battery survived 200,000 charge cycles in three months without any loss of performance.
Thai accidentally has developed a technology that can potentially help a battery hold unlimited charges.
“She started to cycle these gel capacitors, and that’s when we got the surprise. She said that this thing has been cycling 10,000 cycles and it’s still going. She came back a few days later and said it’s been cycling for 30,000 cycles. That kept going on for a month,” said the chair of the university’s chemistry department Reginald Penner.
“Usually these batteries decline rapidly after only five or six thousand cycles, seven thousand at the most. That was crazy,” added Penner.
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Now a PhD graduate and working as Senior Process Engineer in Intel Corporation, Thai’s discovery lead to batteries that could power a normal smartphone or laptop for 400 years and probably the ones that need no replacement for life.
Researchers are still unsure of why the combination of the gel and gold wires make a super battery and currently looking for a cheaper option of gold.
Let’s pray for their success so that we can start using the super durable battery for our smartphones very soon!
Credit: Good Money
