Decorated Anodes Make Light Work of a Fast Charge

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

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 …