In 2016, a UC Irvine student named Mya Le Thai was playing around in the university lab. That day she made an accidentally awesome discovery, and the way we charge our batteries may be changed forever.
The story goes that she was just hanging out – doing some experiments (as one does, when one is a doctoral candidate). She coated gold nanowires in manganese dioxide and then applied an electrolyte gel that offers “Plexiglas-like” protection for the wires. It soon turned out those wires would be able to withstand up to 200,000 charging cycles, which is incredible.
Nanowires are microscopic but very conductive fibers, that function well for relaying an electric charge. So they make a great component in a laptop or cell phone charger, however because of their teeny tiny size, they are very fragile. In their typical configuration (no fancy electrolyte coating) they are only able to withstand a maximum of 8,000 charges before they start to lose their mojo.
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To put it in a different light, a normal laptop battery with regular nanowires has around 300-500 charges in it before it dies. Those charges become less and less efficient as the number of charges reaches ever higher. But with this new configuration, they project that the laptop using the special nanobattery would last up to 400 years.
Better Battery Life Means A Better Life
The implications of this are huge, on multiple fronts. Imagine not having to replace your whole laptop every couple of years, just because the proprietary battery takes a nosedive. The amount of electronic waste we could eliminate is staggering. What about a new kind of car battery, one that would remove a whole different and equally toxic kind of waste? No more junkyards full of car batteries, no more need for a jump start on the side of the road.
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Cell phone batteries could benefit from this discovery, as could any rechargeable Duracell-type batteries. Even your TV remote is about to get smarter. Upgrades for everyone! This technology could be applied to home security to increase effectiveness, and it could be used for making already-safe homes even smarter, too. With batteries that essentially never die, never end up in a landfill, and never fail, what kinds of things could we dream up? It’s easy to let your imagination run wild.
Exploration, discovery, experimentation. The brilliant and curious mind of one doctoral candidate, just messing around in the lab one day. She makes a discovery that can literally change the way our electronics evolve from here forward. There is something so fantastic about the dawn of a new day, new technology in front of us and the potential it suggests.
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But at the same time, it’s awe-inspiring, this kind of “messing around”. The idea that a curious mind could just coat some wires and change history is exciting. She has the space and time – all these brilliant people have the space and time – to let their imaginations run wild. That’s exciting. The curiosity to mix solution “A” with ingredient “B”, and just see what happens. They have access to a place for this experimentation. This running wild. They have professors to guide them, and this gives great hope for the future.
What a time to be alive.
*Article originally appeared at Healthy Holistic Living. Reposted with permission.
