New Battery Tech Breakthrough Could Triple Battery Life for Smartphones and Tablets

[dgstorm]

Sometimes it's the obvious things which go unnoticed for a while yet turn out be be the perfect solution to an old problem. Such is the likely the case with a new scientific breakthrough in battery tech. Researchers at University of California and the Bourns College of Engineering may have just figured out an easy and cheap way to triple the battery life of our smartphones and tablets.

One of the researchers, graduate student Zachary Favors, came up with the idea to add sand to existing battery tech. At some point it dawned on Favors that there is typically a large amount of Quartz in sand. This turned out to be the key to the team's discovery. Here's a quote with more of the details,

After obtaining sand that is rich enough in quartz, Favors milled it to the nanometer scale and purified it. After adding a few other inexpensive ingredients, like ground salt and magnesium, the mix was heated to arrive at pure silicon. That same silicon also proved to be very porous which, reportedly, is the key to improved performance of batteries consisting the element. In any case, a threefold increase in energy density is reported to have resulted from this new process when compared with standard, graphite anode-based batteries. Best of all, this new solution would be far cheaper to produce, not to mention it would be non-toxic and environmentally-friendly.

There are no reports on how quickly this breakthrough will make it to market, but the outlook is quite good. We will keep you updated as to if/when this starts hitting our favorite devices.

Source: PhoneArena

 

[mountainbikermark]

This seems along the same lines as the quest to use crystals for media and data storage. Very doable but so far away at the same time
The I uber powerful USS Enterprise being powered by crystals the size of a human fist doesn't seem so sci fi anymore

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