Posts Tagged ‘Battery’

Nanotechnology, like this miniscule microchip being carried by an ant may extend battery life

No need to hang up: Research involving nanotechnology could mean mobile phone batteries lasting months between charges

A flat battery on your mobile phone can leave you in a sticky situation, but new research could mean you might go months without charging it.

A team of electrical and computer engineers at an Illinois university may have solved the problem by using ‘nanotubes’ – carbon tubes 10,000 times smaller than a human hair.

The scientists replaced the metal wiring in mobile devices’ batteries with the nanotubes and believe the changes could extend battery life by up to 100 times.

‘I think anyone who is dealing with a lot of chargers and plugging things in every night can relate to wanting a cell phone or laptop whose Sony VGP-BPS2C Batteries can last for weeks or months,’ said Eric Pop of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Battery Technology.

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Mr Pop claims his team’s research could one day mean a mobile device like an iPhone could see hugely extended laptop battery life, possibly to the point that it could run by harvesting thermal or solar energy rather than relying on a Acer aspire 5520 battery.

The research could also prove groundbreaking for devices much larger than mobile phones or portable computers.

‘We’re not just talking about lightening our pockets or purses,’ Mr Pop explained.

‘This is also important for anything that has to operate on a HP 338794-001 battery, such as Toshiba satellite laptop battery, telecommunications equipment in remote locations, or any number of scientific and military applications.’

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The group believe their latest study is just the beginning for improving Toshiba PA3456U-1BRS battery life and hope to make devices’ power consumption 1,000 times more efficient.

The findings, published in a report in the Science journal, come in the same week that Google admitted up to 260,000 smartphones had been hacked after handset users unwittingly downloaded virus-infected apps.

The threat came to light last week when the technology giant was forced to withdraw at least 50 apps from its official Android Market.

Mobile and laptop battery charges could last months thanks to nanotechnology

A flat battery on your mobile phone can leave you in a sticky situation, but new research could mean you might go months without charging it.

A team of electrical and computer engineers at an Illinois university may have solved the problem by using ‘nanotubes’ – carbon tubes 10,000 times smaller than a human hair.
The scientists replaced the metal wiring in mobile devices’ laptop batteries with the nanotubes and believe the changes could extend battery life by up to 100 times.

‘I think anyone who is dealing with a lot of chargers and plugging things in every night can relate to wanting a cell phone or laptop whose batteries can last for weeks or months,’ said Eric Pop of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.

Mr Pop claims his team’s research could one day mean a mobile device like an iPhone could see hugely extended battery life, possibly to the point that it could run by harvesting thermal or solar energy rather than relying on a battery.

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The research could also prove groundbreaking for devices much larger than mobile phones or portable computers.

‘We’re not just talking about lightening our pockets or purses,’ Mr Pop explained.
‘This is also important for anything that has to operate on a dell battery, such as satellites, telecommunications equipment in remote locations, or any number of scientific and military applications.’

The group believe their latest study is just the beginning for improving battery life and hope to make devices’ power consumption 1,000 times more efficient.

The findings, published in a report in the Science journal, come in the same week that Google admitted up to 260,000 smartphones had been hacked after handset users unwittingly downloaded virus-infected apps.

The threat came to light last week when the technology giant was forced to withdraw at least 50 apps from its official Android Market.

Tiny breakthrough: Nanotechnology, like this miniscule microchip photographed by Huddersfield University researchers, may extend toshiba laptop battery life.

At any time, the battery life is a question witch people may care about.

You can find more article information in: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1365227/Mobile-laptop-battery-charges-months-thanks-nanotechnology.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Power-Sipping Materials (PCM) Technology That Could Lengthen Battery Life

Researchers at the University of Illinois claim to have made a breakthrough in phase-change materials (PCM) technology that could lengthen battery life by up to two orders of magnitude, or 100 times.

The team, led by Professor Eric Pop, used carbon nanotube electrodes, it stated in a paper published in Science Magazine.

It found that the programming voltage and energy are highly scalable.

“As academic researchers, we will continue to focus on reducing the power dissipation till we reach nearly fundamental limits,” Pop told TechNewsWorld.

“We think another factor of 10 lower power of sony Vgp-bps2c battery is possible,” he added.

Details of the Experiment

PCM stores bits in the resistance of the material used.

Pop’s team created a bit by placing a small amount of PCM in a nanoscale gap formed in the middle of a carbon nanotube, according to an article on the University of Illinois’ website.

The team switched the bit on and off by passing small currents through the nanotube.

Single-wall and small-diameter multi-wall carbon nanotubes were used in the research instead of the metal wires that are the industry standard.

Carbon nanotubes are the smallest known conductors of electricity, according to Pop. They are also very stable, as they don’t degrade like metal wires do. Further, the PCM material that serves as the bit can’t be accidentally erased by electro-magnetic forces from a nearby scanner or magnet, unlike regular magnetic storage.

The minuscule size of the nanotubes — 10,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair — reduced the amount of electricity required.

Pop’s team included David Estrada, Albert Liao and Feng Xiong.

The research was supported by the Focus Center Research Program and by the United States Office of Naval Research.
What Is PCM, Anyhow?

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“PCM is one of those interesting technologies — you basically apply a voltage and chemical changes result,” Jim McGregor, chief dell vostro 1500 battery technology analyst at In-Stat, told TechNewsWorld.”

IBM’s (NYSE: IBM) been working on phase-change memory since at least 2006. Its Zurich labs offer this somewhat circular definition of the technology: PCM is a non-volatile solid-state memory technology that uses phase change materials.

That brings us to the question of what a phase change material is. The term refers to substances with a high heat of fusion that can store and release large amounts of energy when they change from the solid to the liquid state or vice versa.

Sounds very much like what ice does, no? There are several types of PCMs — organic, inorganic, eutectic, and hygroscopic.

Paraffin is an organic PCM; salt hydrates are inorganic PCMs. Eutectics can be organic or a combination of organic and inorganic materials. They consist of a mixture of chemical compounds or elements that have one single chemical composition. One example is eutectic alloys for soldering, consisting of tin and lead. Hygroscopic materials absorb and release water, liberating energy in the process. Wool insulation is one hygroscope material used in buildings.

PCM offers good data retention and scalability performance, and can scale to ultra-small dimensions.
Uses for PCM

PCM can be employed in batteries. It can also be used as a replacement for hard drives, flash (solid-state drives) and maybe even RAM chips, Pop said.

“People have been looking at PCM for some time, because they’re hoping it will deal with the limitations of flash memory, In-Stat’s McGregor said.

PCM may go head to head with another technology — Racetrack memory — that IBM’s been working on.

Racetrack memory has data racing around a wire “track,” using the spin of the electron to store data. There are no parts to wear out, and racetrack memory can be rewritten repeatedly without any wear and tear, unlike conventional memory.

“It’s likely that racetrack memory will compete to some extent with PCM,” Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, told TechNewsWorld. “The two appear to have similar uses.”
Getting to the Money

Several obstacles remain before PCM technology actually hits the market.

“It could be about 10 years, but some challenges about mass-production of carbon nanotubes for circuits must be worked out first,” Pop said.

There are also production Dell inspiron 1520 battery issues that may require 10 to 15 years of work before PCM technology can actually hit the market, Enderle said.

However, the military might get to use it earlier, as “the military has a huge need for this kind of thing and the money to spend to expedite it,” Enderle opined.

Other considerations, the main one of which is cost, also come into play.

“Just like any other memory technology in our industry — it takes billions and billions of dollars to make it competitive and bring to market, and that barrier is becoming higher and higher,” In-Stat’s McGregor remarked.

“So the question now is when does flash run out of steam, because the industry won’t pull the money together until it’s absolutely necessary,” McGregor added.

Recharging Battery Discovered to Contort Internal Nanostructures

Rechargeable batteries. Numerous of our gadgets depend on them, and battery developers know that recharging batteries repeatedly will eventually wear them down. But understanding why they break down has never been precisely clear?auntil now.

High-resolution images produced by researchers at the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s (DOE) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) reveal that the nanomaterials discovered inside these rechargeable batteries turn into contorted and damaged from repeated tension from charging. These findings provide new insight into finding extra resilient materials to make longer lasting batteries. Results were published in a recent issue of the journal Science.

Lithium ions are naturally attracted to electrons?athis is the principle responsible for the rechargeable lithium battery. Positively charged lithium ions typically hang out in the battery’s positive electrode, where a metal oxide shares its electrons with lithium.

But recharging shakes things up. When a battery is charging, totally free electrons are pumped into the negative electrode, which sits across a sea of electrolytes that lithium ions can cross but electrons can not. Lithium wants the electrons on the negative side a lot more than the electrons it shares with the metal oxide on the positive side, so lithium ions flow from the positive to pair up with the free electrons on the negative electrode.

When a device utilizing a battery is turned on, having said that, it permits electrons to slip out of the negative electrode, leaving the lithium ions without a mate. With out free electrons, the lithium ions return again to the positive electrode.

The PNNL study reveals that all this back and forth action of the lithium ions is hard on the tiny structures inside the battery. When these nanowires become charged with electricity they in fact change shape?aswelling, elongating, and spiraling.

The nanowires of the battery’s negative electrode were discovered to swell by a third and double in length when subjected to lithium ions. Scientists say that the stress on these nanowires can eventually damage them, as tiny defects accumulate over time.

The lithium ions had been also shown to change the metal (in this case, tin) oxide nanowires from a neatly arranged crystal to what researchers described as an ?¡ãamorphous glassy material,” in which atoms were arranged much more randomly.

“Nanowires of tin oxide had been able to withstand the deformations associated with electrical flow far better than bulk tin oxide, which can be a brittle ceramic. It reminds me of making a rope from steel?ayou wind together thinner wires as opposed to making 1 thick rope,” said Chongmin Wang, a materials scientist at PNNL in a statement for the project.

Wang, chemist Wu Xu, and other people previously succeeded in taking a snapshot of a partially charged, larger nanowire one-hundredth the width of a human hair, but this project did not reveal the charging in action.

To view the dynamics of a charging electrode, Wang and Xu enlisted the help of other laboratories and employed a specially outfitted transmission electron microscope to set up a miniature battery, allowing researchers to image even smaller wires although charging it.

The team used a battery that included a positive electrode of lithium cobalt oxide along with a negative electrode made from thin nanowires of tin oxide. Between the two electrodes, an electrolyte provided a conduit for lithium ions along with a barrier for electrons. The electrolyte was designed to withstand the conditions inside the microscope.

When the team charged the miniature battery at a constant voltage, lithium ions ran by way of the tin oxide wire, drawn by the electrons at the negative electrode. They observed that the wire swelled and lengthened by about 250 percent in total volume, and twisted like a snake.

Wang hopes that this work will stimulate new ideas for energy storage and inspire a design for a far better battery.

Smallest Battery

To better study the anode’s characteristics, the tiny rechargeable, lithium-based battery was formed inside a transmission electron microscope (TEM) at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT), a Department of Energy research facility jointly operated by Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories.

Says Huang of the work, reported in the Dec. 10 issue of the journal Science, “This experiment enables us to study the charging and discharging of a battery in real time and at atomic scale resolution, thus enlarging our understanding of the fundamental mechanisms by which batteries work.”

Because nanowire-based materials in lithium ion batteries such as dell Latitude D510 battery, dell Inspiron 5100 battery, dell 6T473 battery, offer the potential for significant improvements in power and energy density over bulk electrodes, more stringent investigations of their operating properties should improve new generations of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, laptops and cell phones.

“What motivated our work,” says Huang, “is that lithium ion batteries [LIB] have very important applications, but the low energy and power densities of current LIBs cannot meet the demand. To improve performance, we wanted to understand LIBs from the bottom up, and we thought in-situ TEM could bring new insights to the problem.”

Battery research groups do use nanomaterials as anodes, but in bulk rather than individually — a process, Huang says, that resembles “looking at a forest and trying to understand the behavior of an individual tree.”

The tiny battery created by Huang and co-workers consists of a single tin oxide nanowire anode 100 nanometers in diameter and 10 micrometers long, a bulk lithium cobalt oxide cathode three millimeters long, and an ionic liquid electrolyte. The device offers the ability to directly observe change in atomic structure during charging and discharging of the individual “trees.”

An unexpected find of the researchers was that the tin oxide nanowire rod nearly doubles in length during charging — far more than its diameter increases — a fact that could help avoid short circuits that may shorten battery life. “Manufacturers should take account of this elongation in their battery design,” Huang said. (The common belief of workers in the field has been that batteries swell across their diameter, not longitudinally.)

Huang’s group found this flaw by following the progression of the lithium ions as they travel along the nanowire and create what researchers christened the “Medusa front” — an area where high density of mobile dislocations cause the nanowire to bend and wiggle as the front progresses. The web of dislocations is caused by lithium penetration of the crystalline lattice. “These observations prove that nanowires can sustain large stress (>10 GPa) induced by lithiation without breaking, indicating that nanowires are very good candidates for battery electrodes,” said Huang.

“Our observations — which initially surprised us — tell battery researchers how these dislocations are generated, how they evolve during charging, and offer guidance in how to mitigate them,” Huang said. “This is the closest view to what’s happening during charging of a battery that researcher have achieved so far.”

Lithiation-induced volume expansion, plasticity and pulverization of electrode materials are the major mechanical defects that plague the performance and lifetime of high-capacity anodes in lithium-ion batteries, Huang said. “So our observations of structural kinetics and amorphization [the change from normal crystalline structure] have important implications for high-energy battery design and in mitigating battery failure.”

The electronic noise level generated from the researchers’ measurement system was too high to read electrical currents, but Sandia co-author John Sullivan estimated a current level of a picoampere flowing in the nanowire during charging and discharging. The nanowire was charged to a potential of about 3.5 volts, Huang said.

A picoampere is a millionth of a microampere. A microampere is a millionth of an ampere.

The reason that atomic-scale examination of the charging and discharging process of a single nanowire had not been possible was because the high vacuum in a TEM made it difficult to use a liquid electrolyte. Part of the Huang group’s achievement was to demonstrate that a low-vapor-pressure ionic liquid — essentially, molten salt — could function in the vacuum environment.

Although the work was carried out using tin oxide (SnO2) nanowires, the experiments can be extended to other materials systems, either for cathode or anode studies, Huang said.

“The methodology that we developed should stimulate extensive real-time studies of the microscopic processes in batteries and lead to a more complete understanding of the mechanisms governing battery performance and reliability,” he said. “Our experiments also lay a foundation for in-situ studies of electrochemical reactions, and will have broad impact in energy storage, corrosion, electrodeposition and general chemical synthesis research field.”

Other researchers contributing to this work include Xiao Hua Liu, Nicholas Hudak, Arunkumar Subramanian and Hong You Fan, all of Sandia; Li Zhong, Scott Mao and Li Qiang Zhang of the University of Pittsburgh; Chong Min Wang and Wu Xu of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; and Liang Qi, Akihiro Kushima and Ju Li of the University of Pennsylvania.

Funding came from Sandia’s Laboratory Directed Research and Development Office and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science through the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies and the Energy Frontier Research Centers program.