Husband and wife team, Cenzig S. Ozkam and Mihri Ozkam and their graduate student, Zach Favors, have achieved another innovative approach to creating better batteries. The blog has cited the Ozkan’s earlier effort that involving a new architecture for high-performance batteries capable of charging and discharging at much higher rates, and Favors’ discovery that beach sand in nano-sized form has some potential to increase battery performance considerably. It’s silicon, after all. Zach Favors will share his findings in his presentation, “Beach Sand for Long Cycle Life Li-Ion Batteries,” at the ninth annual Electric Aircraft Symposium. The three, working in the University of California, Riverside’s Bourns College of Engineering “have developed a novel paper-like material for lithium-ion batteries,” with “the potential to boost by several times the specific energy, or amount of energy that can be delivered per unit weight of the battery.” etched SiNF paper, and (d) C-coated SiNF paper as used in the Li-ion half-cell configuration. The material can be spun …
Decorated Anodes Make Light Work of a Fast Charge
Most stories featuring this scientific couple’s (and a few associates’) work focused on the 10-minute charging time for their portable electronics batteries. More interesting to those who look forward to applying this technology in electric vehicles, the three-dimensional, silicon-decorated, cone-shaped carbon-nanotube cluster architecture for lithium ion battery anodes enables a “63 percent increase of total cell capacity and a battery that is 40 percent lighter and smaller.” “Than what?” your editor’s high school math teacher would have insisted. The decorated item would be 63 percent better at holding a charge and 40 percent lighter and smaller than a similar cell with a graphite anode common to many lithium-ion batteries. Even though the researchers concentrated on the anode and seemed not to take a more holistic approach to battery design, the overall results seem promising. Husband and wife team Cengiz S. Ozkan, a mechanical engineering professor at UC Riverside’s Bourns College of Engineering; and Mihrimah Ozkan, an electrical engineering professor, worked with …