Researchers Invent a Transparent Lithium ion Battery for Mobiles
Making batteries transparent would allow scientists to more easily study what happens inside them,but they could also have a commercial use as several companies have already designed partially see-through gadgets such as mobile phones.Researchers at Stanford University,California,used a clear silicon-based polymer as the basis for the battery and,as some of the key active materials could not be made transparent,they made the opaque components smaller than the human eye could see.
There are so many ways in which the electronic components may be made transparent.In one method,the component is made very thin,so the human eye does not register the object.Many users might be in love with their stylish iPhones but they secretly love the idea of having transparent devices-a dream that might just as well come true soon.The Stanford researcher,Yi Cui has now created a see through Lithium ion battery or lithium battery.Several electronics components,such as displays or transistors had already been made transparent,it was only the Lithium ion battery which hadn’t become transparent yet.
There are so many ways in which the electronic components may be made transparent.In one method,the component is made very thin,so the human eye does not register the object.Another method is to give it a pattern,again very small so it is not visible to human eye.While other components of the battery could be made invisible by making the smaller,the electrodes still stood out.The idea of making the electrodes very thin isn’t nice,since thinner electrodes wouldn’t be able to store a lot of power,thus defeating the very purpose of building a battery.
To overcome this problem,Yi Cui decided to go for the second method-he built an electrode in a superfine mesh form,and this mesh was able to store a lot of power,just like normal lithium batteries.”Its cost could be similar to those of regular batteries,”said Cui while talking about the battery,adding,”Especially if we use low cost metals as current collectors,there is no reason this cannot be cheap.”
In the laboratory trials,the research team used the same battery to illuminate an LED light,and the light was easily viewable through the transparent battery.The battery design still has some inefficiencies,but the Stanford research team intends to work on these and believes the design could become commercial within two to four years.
The new invention is a novel type of lithium-ion battery,the kind now popular in consumer electronics because of how much power it can store.To key to making such a battery appear transparent involved miniaturizing its opaque parts until they are too small to be seen with the naked eye and then spreading them apart so they only cover a small portion of a see-through backing.The nimh batteries appear transparent as long as the gridlines in the mesh electrodes are aligned.Light transmittance tests showed the battery was 62 per cent transparent in visible light and 60 per cent even with three full cells stacked on top of each other.
Article From: http://www.batteryfaq.net/battery-news/researchers-invent-a-transparent-lithium-ion-battery-for-mobiles-1788.html
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