Dream battery for your mobile and car is getting close to reality

From the heavy lead acid batteries to today's most widely used light and power-dense lithium ion batteries, the battery technology has seen improvements both in size and performance. The three important things to decide the performance of batteries are anode, cathode and the electrolyte. There is another factor of keeping the cost of manufacturing and material low. The material and the way they are physically built inside the batteries are the differentiators in the performance of the battery. This article gives you an update on the latest technologies in improving the performance of the batteries. One method to improve the storage capacity of battery is to increase the surface area of the anode and cathode by making them porous. Another method to increase the surface area is to have a 3D nano structured anode and cathode, kind of a self assembled nano wires or such nano structures bonded closely. In the material research area, the material's electrochemical/ionic characteristics matter a lot. A graphite anode which is popularly used in present lithium batteries need six carbon atoms for every lithium atom, whereas one silicon atom can bond up to 3.75 lithium atoms. Silicon can have a theoretical storage capacity of 3.6 Ampere hours per gram. So material such as silicon are tried out as a replacement for graphite. Start-up company called SiNode Systems is using a...