When Eveready batteries branded itself as The American Every Ready Company in 1905, we can assume they meant portability. In fact, David Missal invented the ‘D’ batteries to fit inside a flashlight. However, a UCI student may have made the impossible achievable while ‘playing around’ with an electrolyte gel. We really liked that initiative and decided to find out more.
UCI Student Mya Le Thai’s Unprecedented Success
Researchers at the University of California Irvine (UCI) have been studying the properties of gold nanowire for batteries. Now gold nanowire is thousands of times thinner than a human hair. But can sustain 5,000 to 6,000 recharge cycles before it loses its integrity.
This makes UCI student Mya Le Thai’s accidental stroke of genius even more amazing. That’s because her electrolyte gel-coated gold nanowire filaments withstood 200,000 charge cycles in the span of three months of testing. During this time there was no loss in performance, nor were any nanowires fractured by repeated use, Epoch Times reports.
Head of Chemistry Calls Mya Le Thai’s Discovery ‘Crazy’
We’ll allow that, given synonyms for ‘crazy’ include extremely enthusiastic, passionate, fanatical, and excited. We sure are too, when we have crazy visions of an everlasting battery that never needs replacing. Why we could drive, fly, and cross the seas in electric autos, airplanes and ocean cruisers forever.
As battery manufacturers we can take comfort that UCI student Mya Le Thai’s brainchild is still in its infancy. Members of the PhD student’s team are still trying to figure out just how the electrolyte gel made a difference. While others are casting around for other, less expensive metals than gold.
Nanowire has an increased surface area in filaments allowing for greater energy storage and faster exchange of electrons. We might look back in years to come and say thanks heavens that UCI student was playing around in the laboratory.
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Nano Engineering Capacitors as Batteries
Preview Image: PhD Student Mya Le Thai
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