New development in battery technology could make car, cell phone batteries last five times longer

A researcher at the University of Texas at Dallas has announced an interesting development for batteries that can possibly open new avenues for battery-powered gadgets and vehicles. The new technique, would allow the development of new cellphone and car batteries that could last five times longer than the existing ones.

Dr Kyeongjae Cho, a professor of materials science and engineering in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science, has identified new catalyst materials meant for lithium-air batteries, that could give a strong push to the expansion of battery capacity.

The research has been published in Nature Energy which has detailed the discovery.

According to Cho there was huge promise in lithium-air batteries, however, in spite of the aggressive study being conducted by groups worldwide, such promises had not been delivered in reality.

Cho added, ''So this is very exciting progress. (UT Dallas graduate student) Yongping Zheng and our collaboration team have demonstrated that this problem can be solved. Hopefully, this discovery will revitalize research in this area and create momentum for further development'', perfscience.com reported.

Lithium-air (or lithium-oxygen) batteries  'breathe' oxygen from the air to boost the chemical reactions, releasing electricity, rather than saving an oxidiser internally the way lithium-ion batteries did.

Meanwhile, Yi Cui, a materials scientist at Stanford University trying to take lithium--ion batteries, today's best commercial technology to the next level. Yui Cui, who founded a company, Amprius, is Cui is trying to combine battery chemistry with nanotechnology. Cui is building intricately structured battery electrodes capable of soaking up and releasing charge-carrying ions in greater quantities, and faster, than standard electrodes can, without producing troublesome side reactions. ''He's taking the innovation of nanotechnology and using it to control chemistry,'' says Wei Luo, a materials scientist and battery expert at the University of Maryland, College Park, www.sciencemag.org reported.