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 …