One of the biggest drawbacks of modern rechargeable batteries is how quickly they start to wear out – on average one year of daily usage charge / discharge cycles is enough to prevent the battery from reaching its full capacity, except for long-term use. People who have been using the phone for two or more years are well aware of this problem – after that time it starts to discharge very fast and you should carry the charger with you at all times. The only way to fix the problem is to replace the battery. However, thanks to science, this may soon become a thing of the past – a new polymer has been developed that promises to prevent degradation for five years or more.
A team of scientists from the Japan Institute of Advanced Science and Technology (JIST) discovered the solution by examining the negative terminals of lithium-ion batteries, according to the scientific news portal Eureka Alert. They use graphite anodes that require binder, otherwise the graphite in the batteries will simply break.
Polyvinyl fluoride (PVDF) is currently the most commonly used binder, but it is not very suitable for this job – typically 500 batteries can only reach 65% of their original capacity after 500 charge / discharge cycles. All owners of electronic devices are affected by this.
The experience of battery decay can quickly become a thing of the past – the Zeiss team discovered a new binder with an almost indefinable name – bis-imino-acenaphthenequinone-parabenylene (PP) copolymer. Thanks to the new binder, lithium ion batteries can withstand at least 95% full capacity after more than 1,700 charge / discharge cycles. In other words, a battery that is discharged and recharged daily will not lose its original capacity for more than five years.
Researcher Norioshi Matsumi, who led the study, said: “Realizing more durable batteries will help create more reliable products that can be used for a longer period of time. This will encourage consumers to buy more expensive battery-powered assets such as electric cars, which will be available for years to come. ”
This is good news not only for our phones, tablets, laptops, but also for electric vehicles, whose battery life is just as important as traveling the maximum distance.
