Sometimes great inventions and discoveries come down to a bit of luck. A team of scientists at the University of California, Irvine can tell you: They magically found a way to charge a battery up to 200,000 times without any loss of capacity or power.
Considering that a normal battery dies out after 5,000-7,000 cycles, this means it lasts about 400 times longer!
UC Irvine doctoral candidate Mya Le Thai was playing around, and she coated a gold nanowire in a manganese dioxide shell and encased the assembly in an electrolyte made of a Plexiglas-like gel.
“She discovered that just by using this gel, she could cycle it hundreds of thousands of times without losing any capacity,” said Reginald Penner, chair of UC Irvine’s chemistry department.
No doubt electric car manufacturers will closely monitor the development of this super battery.