Nanowire-based electrodes have been shown to increase the power density of batteries such as the lithium-ion battery used in consumer electronics and capacitors. Nanowires are highly conductive with a large surface-area-to-volume ratio, which provides more room for energy storage and electron transfer than bulk materials. These tiny wires, however, are fragile and can be easily damaged during charging and discharging — and thus have short lifespans.
Scientists at the Univ. of California, Irvine, have stumbled across a solution for this Achilles’ heel of nanowire electrodes. They have encased an electrode made of core-shell nanowires in a Plexiglas-like gel electrolyte. Mya Le Thai, a graduate research assistant of energy storage nanomaterials at the Univ. of California, Irvine, cycled the electrode 200,000 times over three months and did not detect significant loss of power or storage capacity.
“Mya was playing around, and she coated this whole thing with a very thin gel layer and started to cycle it,” says Reginald Penner, chair of the chemistry department at the...
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