It is well known that
laptop batteries are something which runs out of charge after a certain period
of time. Thus, they need to go through periodic recharge cycles in order to be
usable again.In time, they give in to wear and tear and need to be replaced.
However, according to a
recent discovery made at the University
of California, something knows as Irvine or UCl is capable of making it through
200,000 recharge cycles in roughly 3 months. If that is to be believed, then
the average lifetime of the laptop can be extended to 400 years.
The student who discovered
this goes by the name of Mya Le Thai. She was only playing around with things
in the lab when she was able to figure all this out. It is amazing just how a
little bit of experimentation and fun can lead to important scientific
discoveries.
It has been years since
researchers have started looking for a suitable alternative for the Lithiumbattery. There was a team at UCl who were working with Nano-wires for this purpose. However, they soon discovered that
these wires were far too thin and would eventually break due to the high number
of charge cycles it went through.
It was only by accident
that Mya here had set up the same set of golden Nano-wires
in a mixture of manganese dioxide and an electrolyte gel that resembled
Plexiglas. The doctoral student even admitted to doing all this just by whim,
without any particular reason. One thing led to another,
and within no time, she had solved one of the biggest scientific puzzles of
recent times.
But even until today, researchers have not been able to
perfectly describe the phenomenon which causes this design to yield the results
that are on display. They had just started to cycle the devices with no
particular motivation and had soon realized
that it would not die anytime soon. Whatever it is,
however, it is definitely a great advancement as far as our progress in technology
is concerned.
