It is strange and amazing at the same time that again in this November when we face the fact that silicon has managed to improve one or another brunch of hi-tech. First time it was optical fiber technology that has beneficed from switching to silicon instead of glass. Bandwidth improvement and possibility to use in PCs as a result. And now silicon appeared to be good enough to outdo graphite anode in lithium ion rechargeable batteries. Graphite anode has been used in batteries for very long time and some of his drawbacks are obvious, there were very few other materials that could be used instead of it and to be better than it until now.Lithium ion batteries are used in lots of electronic gadgets starting from mobile phones and PDAs to popular electric cars or hybrids with a fuel engine and electric engine. Drawbacks we were previously speaking about are refered to batteries' capacity. It means that graphite anode can not capture much of lithium ions and is too week to hold the captured ones for a long time. That why our mobile phones' batteries are running low pretty soon. Even if we got used to it, there are batteries that can hold charge for incomparably longer time but developers don't use them for they all have way greater problems than the lithium ion batteries. Silicon anodes were among those numbers of unreliable rechargeable batteries until recently a group of science enthusiasts from Hanyang University in South Korea haven't roll up their sleeves.
What is wrong with silicon is that it can't be recharged for too many times, and that is what researchers from South Korea have fixed. The answer was to etch silicon dioxide nanoparticles in 900 °C argon atmosphere. Such treatment was not only useful for silicon's lifetime but also to charge speed. Now silicon lithium ion batteries have an appropriate durability and they charge faster than ones with graphite anod.
This invention is going to be very useful for all the electronics that need rechargeable batteries of course, and we will all be very proud to have longer living smartphones, but what is probably even more important – silicon lithium ion batteries are going to improve hybrids and electric cars greatly. Well sure it will not happen tomorrow, they still have to run plenty of test and one of them is to take an electrically powered car to a 100.000 miles long course. Let's cross our fingers for it.
