Here's another cool amazing invention in science, a scientist from Rice University in Houston Texas made the World's smallest nanowire battery ever. The researcher announced they figured out how to squish all three parts of a lithium storage device onto one nanowire with all key parts: anode, cathode, and electrolyte. Keep in mind, the battery is so small, you can barely see it with your eyes when you look at it from a certain angle because its diameter is that of a human hair. But the device has thousands of nanowires that work together as a battery and could one day power nanoscale electronics, according to researchers. The little battery, developed at Rice University, is actually a cross between a battery and a supercapacitor. Supercapacitors can deliver more power at once than batteries--a bigger jolt. The diminutive battery is made by the thousands in dense arrays. Each battery is a nanowire, with one half of the wire working as a negative electrode and the other half as a positive electrode.
The researchers showed that the battery has good charge and discharge abilities, all things that would make it perform well as a battery. The main components include a nickel-tin anode, polyethylene oxide (PEO) electrolyte and polyaniline cathode. Also, the scientists showed that lithium ions could move through the battery and store the ions. Anjayan explained that by putting the cathode inside the nanowire, the device was designed not only to store energy but could also act as an insulator.
The team had been working towards building the single-nanowire device for a while. Last fall, they created three-dimensional nanobatteries. For now, the researchers are working on improving the battery’s efficiency and will worry about the real applications in the future. The main focus now is to improve the performance of the battery by fiddling with the types of materials in the system.
Via : Smartplanet.com
