Accidental Innovation: a battery that lasts forever

When innovations go public, we often think about the years, energy, and efforts that went into its making. What if I say, that sometimes our ponderings go all in vain. Not all innovations and inventions have years of hard work and sweat behind them. Some of them are pure “accidents” - Lysergic acid diethylamide, Dynamite, Anesthesia, Botox, Corn Flakes, champagne, Chewing Gum and much more. The latest entrant to the list is Ultra-long-lasting nanowire battery which endured 200,000 charge cycles over three months “with 94–96 percent average coulombic or faraday efficiency.”

The accidental innovation happened when a doctoral candidate of the University of California Irvine, Mya Le Thai, coated a set of gold nanowires in manganese dioxide and then applied a “Plexiglas-like” electrolyte gel. At the end of three months, however, the researchers found the nanowires in Thai’s gel-coated battery were still intact while they were expecting the wires to have been broken down. Generally, after 8,000 charge cycles, the fragility in the nanowire - microscopic, ultra-thin and highly conductive fibers - causes them to crack during charge and discharge loads. But thai’s gel-coated battery was intact. Basically, this means, a nanowire-based cell can be recharged hundreds of thousands of times, exceeding the conventional lithium-ion cells.

Thai said, "The coated electrode holds its shape much better.” The researchers feel that the electrolyte gel “plasticizes the metal oxide in the battery,” instilling the nanowires with flexibility, which equals longevity. The battery was still rated as brand new by the end of the experiment.

Research co-author Dr. Reginald Penner, also a chemistry professor at the university said, “Scientists are interested in nanowires because they allow high power to be obtained, without reducing the total amount of energy that is stored. But nanowires are fragile.”

He further added, “Any corrosion or dissolution of the nanowire material leads very quickly to breakage of the nanowire, and a loss of its capacity — which is bad. Our research is important because it demonstrates that a very simple modification to a battery or capacitor may allow nanowire electrode materials to last a lot longer, up to 40 times longer in our studies.”

The average laptop battery lasts anywhere from 300 to 500 charge cycles, but with nanowire capacity, it would easily last for 200,000 cycles.

However, this is not the first such invention to happen in the course of history, in 2007 scientists at Stanford came up with a nanowire configuration that got a nano battery through 40,000 charge cycles. At that time, researchers said that manufacturing needed “one or two different steps, but it’s a well-understood process.”

The new battery technology could bring us closer to developing long lasting commercial batteries for computers, smartphones, cars or even spacecraft in the future. However, this update will definitely take years, or we can wait for next "accidental innovation" to happen soon.