Scientists have found that loofah sponge carbon material could make lithium batteries last longer.
In today’s lifestyle, we rely on our smartphone battery life to get us through each day. We use our mobile devices for everything from communication to learning or even just checking the time. However, as much as we are scraping by, better batteries are always needed.
Technology growth requires that we give ourselves better rechargeable lithium batteries for our gadgets.
As a result, scientists around the world are scrambling to find the next big thing in smartphone battery life. Research includes everything from tweaking what we’re already using to starting from scratch. A dramatic change in rechargeable battery technology could drastically change everything from mobile devices to electric vehicles.
Recently, researchers presented a report in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces with regards to a new tech. In this report, they showed how inexpensive loofah sponges could revolutionize rechargeable batteries. If the scientists are right, this has the chance to be used in some highly promising applications.
The new technology would use nothing more than a membrane from a loofah to give better smartphone battery life.
Many technology experts work under the assumption that lithium-ion technology is as optimized as it will get. However, this is not the consensus. Scientists continue to focus their efforts on lithium-ion batteries in order to improve them. At the same time that other researchers are looking into alternatives such as lithium-sulfur, others continue to optimize.
The primary challenge is in commercializing technologies that differ from today’s norm. Moreover, cathodes start crumbling as time passes, leading to a gradual reduction in capacity. Portable battery chargers have become the norm among many mobile gadget users. These are handy devices, of course, but the ideal would be to require fewer accessories to keep a smartphone adequately charged.
Researchers Shanqing Zhang, Yanglong Hou, Li-Min Liu and their colleagues have focused their smartphone battery life research on stabilizing lithium-ion alternatives. They discovered a membrane derived from loofah that prevents cathodes from dissolving. This appears to work not only in lithium-iodine batteries, but also lithium-selenium and lithium-sulfur batteries. Loofah is a very cheap sponge containing carbon. Scientists hope that it is the ideal solution to sustainably and affordably improving rechargeable battery tech.
