Batteries are something of a miracle — they power a big part of our lives, yet the best ones work behind the scenes, quietly powering your phone and asking for little more than a few hours of charging a few times per week.
But now, they’re so omnipresent that we are at their mercy. That’s why you’ll see crowds clustered around power outlets at airports, everyone waiting for his or her turn to charge a phone, tablet or laptop. It may only take an hour or so but what if you only have a minute?
It’s time for a new battery. As gadgets get smaller and energy needs grow, the challenge of fitting more power into smaller spaces — increasing the energy density, as it’s called — becomes increasingly difficult.
Tesla Motors is a case in point. One of the company’s biggest challenges is finding a way to make longer the range of its electric vehicles. For example, Tesla’s Model S sports sedan,, runs only about 260 miles on a full charge — significantly less than the 420 miles on a gas-fueled Lexus LS.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk thinks that a 500-mile charge is technically possible, but the size of the required battery built with today’s technology would come at a major cost to space and comfort.
This quandary has motivates researchers to look for new materials to use as the basic building blocks for batteries. Kenyon Kluge, who is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and a senior engineer at Zero Motorcycles, says some wholly new devices will be coming soon.
Kluge says,”Within the next 5 (to) 10 years, you should expect to see a lot of technologies emerging, one better than the other in terms of energy density, charging rates, lifespan and safety”. “There will be a market for all of these different innovations.”
Source:
http://www.kindletechno.com/in-search-of-a-better-battery.html