Question: how can you make batteries last longer ? thx

Ry Cutter answered on 7 May 2020: last edited 7 May 2020 11:15 am

It really depends on the type of battery and what you’re using it for!
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Currently the main battery type we use is lithium ion. All batteries work the same way, you have an anode (positively charged point), a cathode (negatively charged point), and an electrolyte, which is basically something that makes a liquid conductive! When we put something on charge, the ions from the lithium anode travel in the charged solution and attach to the cathode and when we use the battery, the ions travel back to the anode. This makes electricity. To make a battery last as long as possible we need to maintain the number of ions for as long as possible. The other issue we have, is making them charge fast! It takes hours to charge a lithium battery, but demand for thing like electric cars need to be charged quickly! The most recent improvement to these batteries is using lithium-sulfur on the anode, which was done in Monash, a university I do a lot of collaboration with!
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I’m not an expert, but the one way I know of storing more lithium-ions is to use a 3D cathode! At the moment, most cathodes are made of graphite, which is a single layer film of carbon (which we call 2D as it’s a flat surface 1 atom thick!) We can trade the graphite for silicon, and this will make a 3D surface! This means there are more places for the lithium ions to stick, which means it can hold more charge! The biggest problem with the technology at the minute is that nano-silicon degrades very quickly. We need to prevent that happening before we can mass market the new battery! This work is being conducted primarily in California!
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I hope that helps answer your question!
Ry
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P.S. Lithium batteries were first built in the 1970s by chemist John Goodenough and his team Phil Wiseman, Koichi Mizushima, and Phil Jones. Their research was published in 1980 and commercialised by Sony, who then made the first lithium ion batteries in the early 1990s!