New York: Your friendly pomegranate fruit has inspired scientists to discover batteries for your smartphones, tablets and electric cars that won't leave you powerless midway.
An electrode designed like a pomegranate - with silicon nanoparticles clustered like seeds in a tough carbon rind - overcomes obstacles in using silicon for a new generation of lithium-ion batteries, claim inventors.
"This design brings us closer to using silicon anodes in smaller, lighter and more powerful batteries," said Yi Cui, an associate professor at Stanford University and the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
Experiments showed our pomegranate-inspired anode operates at 97 percent capacity even after 1,000 cycles of charging and discharging - which puts it well within the desired range for commercial operation, he added.
The anode, or negative electrode, is where energy is stored when a battery charges.
Silicon anodes could store 10 times more charge than the graphite anodes in today's rechargeable lithium-ion batteries.
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