Batteries and News

The problem of the slow degradation of Li-ion batteries is usually due to the formation of a solid electrolyte interphase film that increase the batteries internal resistance and prevents a full recharge. Researchers have suggested using silicon in the composition of the negative electrode material in Li-ion batteries to improve charge capacity. However Toshiba Satellite P100 Battery, this material leads to even faster capacity loss as it repeatedly alloys and then de-alloys during charge-discharge cycles.

The researchers grew carbon nanotubes on the surface of tiny particles of silicon using a technique known as chemical vapor deposition in which a carbon-containing vapor decomposes and then condenses on the surface of the silicon particles forming the nanoscopic tubes. They then coated these particles with carbon released from sugar at a high temperature in a vacuum Toshiba Satellite P300 Battery . A separate batch of silicon particles produced using sugar but without the CNTs was also prepared.

Nanotechnology could improve the life of the lithium batteries used in portable devices, including laptop computers, mp3 players, and mobile phones. Research to be published in the Inderscience publication International Journal of Nanomanufacturing demonstrates that carbon nanotubes can prevent such batteries from losing their charge capacity over time.

Shengyang’s Hui-Ming Cheng and colleagues have turned to carbon nanotubes (CNTs) to help them use silicon (Si) as the battery anode but avoid the problem of large volume change during alloying and de-alloying Toshiba Satellite U200 Battery. Carbon nanotubes resemble rolled-up sheets of hexagonal chicken wire with a carbon atom at the crossover points of the wires and the wires themselves being the bonds between carbon atoms, and they can be up to a millimeter long but mere nanometers in diameter.

Researchers at the Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, in China, have been investigating how to improve the kind of rechargeable batteries that are almost ubiquitous in today’s portable devices. Mobile phones, mp3 players, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and laptop computers usually use lithium-ion batteries to give them portability. However, Li-ion Toshiba Satellite M55 Battery  suffer from degradation especially when they get too hot or too cold and eventually lose the capacity to be fully recharged. This means a loss of talk time for mobile phone users and often no chance to use a laptop for the whole of a long haul flight.

They found that after twenty cycles of the semi-cell experiments, the sugar-coated Si-CNT composite material achieved a discharge capacity of 727 milliamp hours per gram. In contrast the charge capacity of the simple sugar-coated particles had dropped to just 363 mAh per gram.

With the new Si-CNT anode material to hand, the team then investigated how well it functioned in a prototype Li-ion battery and compared the results with the material formed from sugar-coated silicon particles.

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Researchers found that ionization detectors were more prone to nuisance alarms, often caused by cooking. Nuisance alarms are the most cited reason by residents for removing or disconnecting an alarm battery. “Many fires in the house start in or around the kitchen, so we know that it is critical to have functioning smoke alarms on the first level, adjacent to the kitchen,” said Dr. Beth Mueller, the study principal investigator and epidemiologist at the HIPRC Dell Inspiron E1705 Battery.  “Clearly, photoelectric detectors performed much better in this part of the house.”

The study appears in the April issue of the international journal Injury Prevention. Research was funded in part by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and the King County Fire Chiefs’ Association. Harborview Injury Prevention & Research Center is affiliated with the University of Washington Dell Latitude D500 Battery, and Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. It is one of the nation’s leading centers dedicated to injury prevention and trauma research.

If you thought all smoke alarms were equally effective, think again.  According to a recent study by researchers from the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center (HIPRC) and the University of Washington in Seattle, photoelectric smoke alarms are much more likely to remain functioning after installation than are ionization alarms Dell Latitude D510 Battery.  Ionization alarms are the most common type found in U.S. households.

“The study results are significant,” said Dr. David Grossman, a pediatrician and study co-investigator who is now medical director for preventive care at Group Health in Seattle. “Though the U.S. has made great strides in getting these life-saving smoke alarms in people’s homes, we still have a long way to go to make sure that they remain operational Dell Latitude D520 Battery.  Photoelectric alarms may be a key answer to providing longer term protection.”

The study, which looked at more than 750 households in Washington State, found that nine months after a smoke alarm was installed, 20% of the ionized alarms did not function, compared to just 5% of the photoelectric alarms.  Researchers checked the same alarms six months later and found similar results Dell Latitude D600 Battery.  The most common cause of a non-functioning alarm was the removal or disconnection of the battery.

Alarms sold for home use in the U.S. are ionization, photoelectric, or combination designs. Photoelectric and ionization alarms operate differently.  While both detect particles from combustion, photoelectric alarms use optical sensors and are more sensitive to slow Dell Latitude D610 Battery, smoldering conditions. Ionization alarms are responsive to flames by detecting particles from rapid combustion.

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In private solar energy plants, the surplus energy is stored in lead batteries until it is needed. The drawback of these storage systems is that they can only survive a limited number of cycles and normally have to be replaced after three to five years. In wind and solar parks, the energy is conserved by pumped storage plants. These, too, have a disadvantage: They have a relatively low rate of efficiency, which means that a lot of energy is lost. What is more, they take up a great deal of space. Redox flow Dell Inspiron 6000 Battery offer an alternative to lead batteries and pumped storage plants: They have a comparable energy density, but their service life is nearly ten times as long as that of lead batteries. So far, however, they are quite expensive in relation to their performance and energy density.

This has already resulted in several fires and subsequent recall campaigns. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC in Würzburg have optimized the safety of these Dell Inspiron 630m Battery. “We have succeeded in replacing the inflammable organic electrolytes with a non-flammable polymer that retains its shape,” says ISC team leader Dr. Kai-Christian Möller.

A prototype of the new lithium-ion batteries already exists, and the researchers will be presenting it at Hannover Messe (Hall 13, Stand E20). However, between three and five years are likely to elapse before the battery will cross shop counters in laptop computers, PDAs and cordless screwdrivers, the expert believes. The conductivity of the polymer needs further improvement to enable the Dell Inspiron 6400 Battery to deliver or store as much power as possible in as short a time as possible. Once this happens, though, it is quite realistic to expect this type of battery – in conjunction with a capacitor – to be able to compete with the lead batteries in cars.

Fraunhofer researchers have created a novel lithium-ion battery. It is based on a polymer electrolyte, which is – unlike the liquid electrolyte in conventional lithium-ion Dell Inspiron 640m Battery – not inflammable. A test set-up for redox flow batteries will be on display at the Hannover Messe Show in Gernany show. This makes it possible to compare different redox systems in a single test set-up.

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology ICT in Pfinztal intend to change that situation in the years ahead: “We have developed the prototype of a redox flow battery that enables us to test various electrode materials, membranes and electrolytes as flexibly as possible,” reports ICT group leader Dr. Jens Tübke. “In this way, we can compare different redox systems in the same test set-up. This allows us to work out precisely what are the pros and cons of each system Dell Inspiron 700m Battery. It is not possible to compare the systems on the basis of existing documentation, as of course everyone measures them in a different test set-up.”

“This considerably enhances the safety of lithium-ion batteries. What’s more, because it is a solid substance, the electrolyte cannot leak out of the battery.” The polymer used by the researchers is derived from the Ormocer® group of substances – a compound with silicon-oxygen chains that form an inorganic structure to which organic side chains become attached. The big challenge is to ensure that the polymers will efficiently conduct the lithium ions that supply the power for the cell phone and the PDA. “Normally, the more solid a polymer is, the less conductive it becomes. But we had numerous parameters that we could adjust – for example Dell Inspiron 710m Battery, we can use coupling elements with two, three or four arms. As a result, we have more possibilities with Ormocer®s than with a single type of plastic,” says Möller.

Lithium-ion batteries supply the power for cell phones and PDAs, and larger devices such as laptops, cordless screwdrivers and lawnmowers are becoming increasingly dependent on this power source Dell Inspiron E1405 Battery. The advantage of these power storage devices lies in their high energy density and voltage (up to four volts). In terms of safety, however, they have one disadvantage – the organic electrolytes are inflammable and can easily catch fire.

Redox flow batteries store solar energy Solar cells can be seen on the roofs of more and more houses today. The energy supplied by the sun and the wind is also increasingly being used on a large scale – in wind turbines and solar parks. But the energy supplied by the sun and the wind does not usually correspond to power requirements Dell Inspiron E1505 Battery: On sunny days the solar cells often deliver more electricity than is needed, while solar energy may be in short supply when the sky is overcast. The amount of energy harvested from wind turbines fluctuates in a similar way.

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Compared to a previous EEG demonstrator developed within Holst Centre, which was solely powered by thermoelectric generators positioned on the forehead, the hybrid system has a reduced size and weight. Combined with full autonomous operation, no maintenance and an acceptable low heat flow from the head, it further increases the patient’s autonomy and quality of life Dell Inspiron 1520 Battery. Potential applications are detection of imbalance between the two halves of the brain, detection of certain kinds of brain trauma and monitoring of brain activity.

Technical details

The thermoelectric generator is composed of six thermoelectric units made up from miniature commercial thermopiles. Each of the two radiators, on left and right sides of the head, has an external area of 4×8cm² that is made of high-efficiency Si photovoltaic cells Dell Inspiron 1521 Battery. Further, thermally conductive comb-type structures (so-called thermal shunts) have been used to eliminate the thermal barrier between the skin and the thermopiles that is caused by the person’s hair on the thermoelectric generator.

The Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre, affiliated with the Holst Centre, has developed a battery-free wireless 2-channel EEG* system powered by a hybrid power supply using body heat and ambient light which could be used to monitor brain waves after a head injury. The hybrid power supply combines a thermoelectric generator that uses the heat dissipated from a person’s temples and silicon photovoltaic cells Dell Inspiron 1720 Battery. The entire system is wearable and integrated into a device resembling headphones. The system can provide more than 1mW on average indoor, which is more than enough for the targeted application.

The EEG system uses IMEC’s proprietary ultra-low-power biopotential readout application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) to extract high-quality EEG signals with micro-power consumption. A low-power digital-signal processing block encodes the extracted EEG data Dell Inspiron 1721 Battery, which are sent to a PC via a 2.4GHz wireless radio link. The whole system consumes only 0.8mW, well below the power produced to provide full autonomy.

Thermoelectric generators using body heat typically show a drop in generated power when the ambient temperature is in range of the body temperature. Especially outside, the photovoltaic cells in the hybrid system counter this energy drop and ensure a continuous power generation. Moreover, they serve as part of the radiators for the thermoelectric generator, which are required to obtain high efficiency.

The system is a tangible demonstrator of Holst Centre’s Human++ program researching healthcare, lifestyle and sport applications of body area networks Dell Inspiron 600m Battery. Future research targets further reduction of the power consumption of the different system components of the body area network as well as a significant reduction of the production cost by using micromachining. Interested parties can get more insight in this research or license the underlying technologies through membership of the program.

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The MIT team focused on direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs), in which the methanol is directly used as the fuel and reforming of alcohol down to hydrogen is not required. Such a fuel cell is attractive because the only waste products are water and carbon dioxide (the latter produced in small quantities). Also, because methanol is a liquid Dell Latitude E6500 Battery, it is easier to store and transport than hydrogen gas, and is safer (it won’t explode). Methanol also has a high energy density-a little goes a long way, making it especially interesting for portable devices.

The team is now exploring whether the new film could be used by itself, completely replacing Nafion. To that end, they have been generating thin films that stand alone, with a consistency much like plastic wrap.

“Our goal is to replace traditional fuel-cell membranes with these cost-effective, highly tunable and better-performing materials,” said Paula T. Hammond, Bayer Professor of Chemical Engineering and leader of the research team Dell Latitude E6400 Battery. She noted that the new material also has potential for use in other electrochemical systems such as batteries.

To test their creation, the engineers coated a Nafion membrane with the new film and incorporated the whole into a direct methanol fuel cell. The result was an increase in power output of more than 50 percent.

MIT engineers have improved the power output of one type of fuel cell by more than 50 percent through technology that could help these environmentally friendly energy storage devices find a much broader market Dell Latitude E4300 Battery, particularly in portable electronics.

The new material key to the work is also considerably less expensive than its conventional industrial counterpart, among other advantages.

Like a battery, a fuel cell has three principal parts: two electrodes (a cathode and anode) separated by an electrolyte. Chemical reactions at the electrodes produce an electronic current that can be made to flow through an appliance connected to the battery or fuel cell. The principal difference between the two? Fuel cells get their energy from an external source of hydrogen fuel, while conventional Dell Latitude E5500 Battery draw from a finite source in a contained system.

The DMFCs currently on the market, however, have limitations. For example, the material currently used for the electrolyte sandwiched between the electrodes is expensive. Even more important: that material, known as Nafion, is permeable to methanol, allowing some of the fuel to seep across the center of the fuel cell. Among other disadvantages Dell Latitude E5400 Battery, this wastes fuel-and lowers the efficiency of the cell-because the fuel isn’t available for the reactions that generate electricity.

The work was reported in a recent issue of Advanced Materials by Hammond, Avni A. Argun and J. Nathan Ashcraft. Argun is a postdoctoral associate in chemical engineering; Ashcraft is a graduate student in the same department.

Using a relatively new technique known as layer-by-layer assembly, the MIT researchers created an alternative to Nafion. “We were able to tune the structure of [our] film a few nanometers at a time,” Hammond said, getting around some of the problems associated with other approaches Dell Inspiron 1420 Battery. The result is a thin film that is two orders of magnitude less permeable to methanol but compares favorably to Nafion in proton conductivity.

This work was supported by the DuPont-MIT Alliance through 2007. It is currently supported by the National Science Foundation.

In addition, Hammond and colleagues have begun exploring the new material’s potential use in photovoltaics Dell Inspiron 1501 Battery. That work is funded by the MIT Energy Initiative.

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Metal hydrides also store hydrogen, though not as well, but recently it’s been shown that a combination of the two not only can store significant quantifies of hydrogen but also can release it at lower temperatures than the lithium amide alone (about 100 degrees Celsius) while generating much less ammonia.

The abundant element hydrogen could play a role in replacing carbon-based fuels for transportation in the future, but researchers first must develop a method to store and release large amounts of the highly flammable Dell Latitude D810 Battery, odorless invisible gas economically and safely. There are materials that are known to trap relatively large quantities of hydrogen, at normal pressures, but to date they all require heating to fairly high temperatures to release the hydrogen.

“I found that the mobility of small ions in the mixed amide-hydride system greatly improves hydrogen storage properties,” Wu explains. “This finding helps us understand how hydrogen travels in and out of these systems and that may lead to a rational development of better materials for hydrogen storage.”

A materials scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has deciphered the structure of a new class of materials that can store relatively large quantities of hydrogen within its crystal structure for later release Dell Latitude D630 Battery. The new analysis may point to a practical hydrogen storage material for automobile fuel cells and similar applications.

To understand how the compound achieves this, Wu used neutron analysis to work out the atomic structure of the material, which she found consists of layers of calcium between which lithium ions travel rapidly. The easy travel allows the material to transfer the hydrogen at lower temperatures. Also the hydrogen ions in the amide and hydride mixture combine easily and release hydrogen at lower temperature without creating much ammonia.

Hui Wu, a research associate from the University of Maryland working in a cooperative research program at the NIST Center for Neutron Research, has been investigating a new hydrogen storage compound that mixes lithium amide with lightweight metal hydrides Dell Vostro 1000 Battery. Lithium amide can hold more than 10 percent of hydrogen by weight, well above the 6 percent target set by the U.S. Department of Energy as a 2010 goal for a hydrogen storage material for transportation. The material absorbs and releases hydrogen reversibly, but both absorbing and releasing the hydrogen requires high temperatures and also produces a toxic byproduct, ammonia.

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Phoenix measures one square millimeter. There’s nothing special about its size, as chips in many modern sensors and electronics are one square millimeter and smaller. But Phoenix is the same size as its thin-film IBM ThinkPad T41 Battery, marking a major achievement.

The timer “isn’t an atomic clock,” Hanson said. “We keep time to 10 minutes plus or minus a few tenths of a second. For the applications this is designed for, that’s okay. You don’t need absolute accuracy in a sensor. We’ve traded that for enormous power savings.”

A unique power gate design is an important part of the sleep strategy IBM ThinkPad T42 Battery. Power gates block the electric current from parts of a chip not essential for memory during sleep.

In most cases, batteries are much larger than the processors they power, drastically expanding the size and cost of the entire system, said David Blaauw, a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. For instance, the Dell Inspiron 1300 Battery in a laptop computer is about 5,000 times larger than the processor and it provides only a few hours of power.

“Low power consumption allows us to reduce battery size and thereby overall system size. Our system, including the battery, is projected to be 1,000 times smaller than the smallest known sensing system today,” Blaauw said. “It could allow for a host of new sensor applications.”

A low-power microchip developed at the University of Michigan uses 30,000 times less power in sleep mode and 10 times less in active mode than comparable chips now on the market.

The Phoenix Processor, which sets a low-power record, is intended for use in cutting-edge sensor-based devices such as medical implants, environment monitors or surveillance equipment.

Scott Hanson, a doctoral student in the U-M Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, will present the design June 20 at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Symposium on VLSI Circuits. Hanson jointly leads this project with Mingoo Seok, a doctoral student in the same department.

A group of U-M researchers is putting the Phoenix in a biomedical sensor to monitor eye pressure in glaucoma patients. Engineers envision that chips like this could also be sprinkled around to make a nearly invisible sensor network to monitor air or water or detect movement. They could be mixed into concrete to sense the structural integrity of new buildings and bridges. And they could power a robust pacemaker that could take more detailed readings of a patient’s health, researchers say.

The chip consumes just 30 picowatts during sleep mode. A picowatt is one-trillionth of a watt. Theoretically, the energy stored in a watch Dell Inspiron 9200 Battery would be enough to run the Phoenix for 263 years.

To achieve such low power, Phoenix engineers focused on sleep mode, where sensors can spend more than 99 percent of their lives. Sensors wake only briefly to compute at regular intervals.

The system defaults to sleep. A low-power timer acts as an alarm clock on perpetual snooze, waking Phoenix every ten minutes for 1/10th of a second to run a set of 2,000 instructions. The list includes checking the sensor for new data, processing it, compressing it into a sort of short-hand, and storing it before going back to sleep.

In typical state-of-the-art chips, power gates are wide with low resistance to let through as much electric current as possible when the device is turned on. These chips wake up quickly and run fast, but a significant amount of electric current leaks through in sleep mode.

“Sleep mode power dominates in sensors, so we designed this device from the ground up with an efficient sleep mode as the No. 1 goal. That’s not been done before,” said Dennis Sylvester, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Phoenix engineers used much narrower power gates that restrict the flow of electric current. That strategy, coupled with the deliberate use of an older process technology, cut down on energy leaks.

“A power gate of such a small size is unheard of in traditional design since it severely limits the performance of the chip,” Seok said.

To address this performance loss, the Michigan team increased the chip’s operating voltage Dell Inspiron 9400 Battery, increasing the baseline power by approximately 20 percent when the chip is awake. But Phoenix still runs at 0.5 Volts, rather than the 1 to 1.2 Volts typical chips require.

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This novel reaction process, resembling a wave sweeping through the crystal, explains how two insulating materials (one in the charged state and the other in the discharged state) can nonetheless make lithium-ion batteries function. These results are an important step forward in the quest for new low cost and safer electrode materials for future lithium IBM ThinkPad Z60t Battery . The research has also made it possible to understand the processes taking place at the nanometer scale in lithium iron phosphate-based batteries, which may be used in tomorrow’s hybrid and electric cars.

Their experimentally verified “domino-cascade model” shows that local stresses within the material allow electrical and ionic conduction to spread from one area to the next, making the battery function. These results open new horizons in the search for improved IBM ThinkPad Z61t Battery electrode materials and help explain how tomorrow’s electric car batteries work.

Notes:

(1) Institut de chimie de la matière condensée de Bordeaux, ICMCB, (CNRS / Université de Bordeaux / ENSCPB).

(2) CEA-Liten : Laboratoire d’innovation pour les technologies des énergies nouvelles et les nanomatériaux.

In the future, these applications may rely on lithium iron phosphate: it is environmentally friendly and has exceptional properties combined with low cost and good thermal stability (important for safety reasons). All these qualities make it the best candidate to be used in lithium IBM ThinkPad X40 Battery  for future electric cars. However, this material does not have the ionic and electrical conduction properties needed to make the electrode work.

Why does lithium iron phosphate, a candidate for use in future lithium IBM ThinkPad X41 Battery, conduct electricity despite being an insulating material? Chemists at CNRS (1), working in collaboration with a team from CEA-Liten (2), have shed light on this paradox.

CNRS chemists from the Institut de chimie de la matière condensée de Bordeaux (ICMCB) and their partners from CEA-Liten became the first to explain this paradox. By studying lithium iron phosphate, they showed that the battery’s IBM ThinkPad T40 Battery charge-discharge cycles are made possible by a “domino cascade process.” This phenomenon occurs as soon as stresses are present at the interface between the discharging material and the material in the discharged state. Electrical and ionic conduction is then extremely rapid in the interfacial zone, propagating from one spot to the next like dominos as the interface moves. The model has been verified by microscopic measurements.

Lithium-ion batteries, which store three to four times more energy per unit mass than traditional batteries, are now used extensively in portable electronic devices (computers, cell phones, MP3 players, etc.). The positive electrode materials in these IBM ThinkPad T43 Battery are highly effective but too expensive to be used in the large batteries needed for electric vehicles and second generation hybrid vehicles.

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The pilot project was launched by Volkswagen and Germany’s Federal Ministry for the Environment BMU together with seven other partners. The Fraunhofer Institutes for Silicon Technology ISIT in Itzehoe, Integrated Circuits IIS in Nuremberg, and Integrated Systems and Device Technology IISB in Erlangen will be pooling their expertise for the next three years IBM ThinkPad R60 Battery. The researchers are developing an energy storage module based on lithium-polymer accumulator technology that is suitable for use in vehicles.

The tasks involved are distributed between the three Fraunhofer Institutes according to their skills: The ISIT experts, who have long experience in developing and manufacturing lithium accumulators, are manufacturing the cells. Their colleagues at IIS are responsible for battery management and monitoring. The scientists from IISB are contributing their know-how on power electronics components to configure the accumulator modules IBM ThinkPad T60 Battery. The development and configuration of the new energy storage module is expected to be finished by mid-2010. Volkswagen AG – the industrial partner in this project – will then carry out field trials to test the modules’ suitability for everyday use in the vehicles.

Hybrid technology combines the advantages of combustion engines and electric motors. Scientists are developing high-performance energy storage units, a prerequisite for effective hybrid motors.

A specially developed battery management system makes the energy storage device more durable and reliable. The experts are also researching into new concepts that will enable large amounts of energy to be stored in a small space. To do this Lenovo ThinkPad X60 Tablet PC Series Battery, they integrate mechanical and electrical components in a single module, devising systems for temperature control, performance data registration and high-voltage safety.

The vehicle is powered by petroleum on the freeway and by electricity in town, thus using considerably less energy. A hybrid propulsion system switches over to generator operation when the brakes go on, producing electric current that is temporarily stored in a battery. The electric motor uses this current when starting up. This yields tremendous savings, particularly in urban traffic.

“This module has to be able to withstand the harsh environmental conditions it will encounter in a hybrid vehicle, and above all it must guarantee high operational reliability and a long service life Lenovo ThinkPad X61 Tablet PC Series Battery,” states ISIT scientist Dr. Gerold Neumann, who coordinates the Fraunhofer activities. The researchers hope to reach this goal with new electrode materials that are kinder to the environment.

But up to now, hybrid technology has always had a storage problem. Scientists from three Fraunhofer Institutes are developing new storage modules in a project called “Electromobility Fleet Test”.

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In the new study, scientists first grew clusters of carbon nanotubes, strands of pure carbon 50,000 times thinner than a human hair, that are known to have superior electrical conductivity. The scientists then deposited manganese oxide onto the nanotubes using a simple, low-cost coating technique called “electrodeposition,” resulting in nano-sized clusters that resemble tiny dandelions under an electron microscope IBM ThinkPad R50 Battery. The result was a battery system with higher energy storage capacity, longer life, and greater efficiency than conventional battery materials, the researchers say.

These “nanoflowers” may power next-generation electronic devices, say the scientists in a report scheduled for the Oct. 8 issue of ACS’ Nano Letters, a monthly journal.

Want more power and longer battery life for that cell phone, laptop, and digital music player? “Flower power” may be the solution IBM ThinkPad R51 Battery. Chemists are reporting development of flower-shaped nanoparticles with superior electronic performance than conventional battery materials.

Gaoping Cao and colleagues point out that nanoflowers are not new. Researchers have developed various types of flower-shaped nanoparticles using different materials, including manganese oxide, the key metallic ingredient that powers conventional batteries IBM ThinkPad R52 Battery. However, older-generation nanoflowers were not suitable for electronic products of the future, which will demand more power and longer battery life, the researchers say.

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