Smartphone batteries: When will they last longer?

In laboratories around the world, scientists are looking for ways to power their phones on and again allow them to live up to their names.
This is a problem that everyone is familiar.
You take out a smooth smartphone from your pocket to make a phone call, but there is no sign of life.
How is this possible?
You plug in every night.
Be careful not to spend too long watching Facebook.
You barely use GPS and you always wait until you click on the YouTube link on your laptop at home.
But you still have a \"phone\" with a battery running out of power \".
The fact is that our features require a strong force --
A fully charged smartphone has surpassed any improvements in battery technology.
It will only get worse as the next-
Generation 4g network online, let mobile phone access highspeed always-
Connection and torrent of data.
Without a step-by-step change in battery technology, tomorrow\'s digital nomads will be paralyzed --
These new tools are tied to plugs and cables.
\"I don\'t think we are too far from the battery development, if the battery can\'t develop faster, it will have a significant drag on the function provided by your smartphone, natasha Stoke, editor of Mobile Choice magazine, said.
She predicts that without a radical response, it won\'t take long for power-hungry phones to last \"six hours \".
There are a variety of emerging technologies that are looking to solve this problem, such as solar panels embedded in the screen, or power devices that use your actions to charge the phone.
But these are a long way from providing an actual solution.
Researchers say what is needed now is a brand new battery.
It may help now.
In laboratories around the world, the team is testing new materials, chemicals and technologies designed to charge the phone, and once again making the phone name.
Memory cells are largely based on the same simple principle: they convert chemical energy into electrical energy.
To do this, they contain a positive electrode and a negative electrode-called cathode and anode --
Substances called electrolyte are separated.
When these electrodes are connected to the circuit, a series of chemical reactions are initiated.
At one end, charged particles from the electrolyte-called ions --
Flow to the Sun, react and release electrons.
At the other end, the reaction of the cathode produces a material like a sponge
Want to suck up these free electrons
The result is a system that is filled with electrons in the anode that want to move to the cathode.
But this is the second job of electrolyte.
It prevents electrons from taking direct paths, but forces them to pass through the wiring of connected circuits, such as lights.
It is the electron that generates current through this flow of the circuit.
In rechargeable batteries, the reaction is reversible, and ions and electrons flow in reverse during charging.
This same reaction is the core of rechargeable lithium --
Ion batteries are used on almost all smartphones.
These are made of carbon (usually graphite), a metal oxide cathode, and an electrolyte containing lithium salt.
Lithium has become the preferred metal for these batteries because it is relatively easy to separate ions from lithium metals, triggering important reactions and improving performance.
The technology has been around since 1970, but it wasn\'t until Sony launched its first commercial unit in 1991 that they actually took off and replaced the previous nickel-cadmium product.
Market for lithium
The value of the ion power supply now exceeds $12 bn and will rise to nearly $54 bn in 2020.
There are several reasons for their advantage-they are lightweight;
They tend to keep charging better than other batteries and they won\'t be affected by this situation
Known as the \"memory effect\", if the battery is not exhausted and then fully charged, the battery will maintain less and less power.
The key is that they also have high energy density.
Measure the extent to which a battery pack is punched.
Over the past 20 years, researchers and manufacturers have been squeezing more and more energy out of these packages, doubling their performance.
This is achieved by clever engineering design, cleverly adjusting the structure inside the battery to improve efficiency, or adding new materials to improve performance.
This process continues today, and materials such as silicon have received a lot of attention as possible alternatives and improvements
Graphite anode for lithiumion batteries.
Silicon is attractive because it is cheap, rich and easy to understand.
But more importantly, by weight, it can store lithium ions ten times more than graphite, which means that in theory it can store 10-
Performance growth.
To be useful, however, researchers must overcome a problem.
When the graphite anode absorbs lithium ion, they maintain the shape and the silicon expands, resulting in the separation of silicon particles, thus rapidly reducing the performance of the battery.
To solve this problem, Dr. Gao Liu of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California is developing a rubber conductive adhesive stuck to silicon particles in the anode, stretching and shrinking when the battery is charged and discharged.
He worked with theoretical chemists to determine the right materials for these constraints and eventually precipitate on conductive plastics.
Preliminary results show that lithium can be produced by his new anode.
The capacity of the ion battery is 25 to 30% larger than the current battery on the market, and the life is longer.
\"Our latest tests show that our materials work well and are very stable,\" Dr. Liu said . \".
\"Even after more than 1,000 charging cycles, it keeps its conductivity, structure and capacity well.
\"He is working with business partners, including multinational 3 m companies, and says he is currently answering calls from consumer electronics companies almost every day.
But he must act quickly.
American companies Amprius and Nanosys are already developing lithium-
Solve the expansion problem with an ion battery containing an anode containing silicon nano wires, while the electronics giant Panasonic will launch lithium-
The Ion laptop battery with silicon alloy anode has increased its capacity by 30%.
The company has yet to announce a mobile phone battery, but industry observers say it may be working on it.
However, despite the commercial benefits, these advances will soon become a bottleneck.
The researchers say these incremental improvements can only lead to performance improvements at best.
Professor Gerbrand Ceder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) said: \"The field of lithium ion research has now been 30 years, and it has been commercialized for more than 20 years . \".
\"It\'s hard to say what\'s impossible as a scientist, but when you look at the candidate, it doesn\'t seem like we\'re going to get better abilities, that\'s why we started seeing a lot of research on completely different chemistry and completely different technologies.
One example is lithium-
Zinc-inspired air battery
In the 1960 s, the air bag was first used for hearing aids, which gained energy by reacting zinc to oxygen in the air.
Professor Peter Bruce of the University of St. Andrew in Scotland has been working on the idea since 2007, and the anode is made of light porous carbon.
Oxygen in the air enters the porous carbon and reacts with lithium ions in the electrolyte and electrons in the external circuit to form solid lithium oxide.
Charging breaks down lithium compounds, releases lithium ions and releases oxygen.
The calculation of the amount of energy involved in the chemical reaction shows that as long as the existing lithium-
Ion one-hint that one day your smartphone can charge again for a week.
However, Professor Bruce said there is still a lot of work to be done, especially in terms of determining stable electrolyte, which only allows useful electro-chemical reactions without wasting additional reactions.
At the same time, other groups in the United States, Europe and Asia joined the competition.
\"This is an exciting time, but there are still considerable challenges,\" Professor Bruce said . \".
\"Science is promising, but we can\'t guarantee that it will end with a viable technology.
But this is not the only lithium.
Hope to dive into your next phone based on the battery.
Researchers are also working on light lithium.
Sulfur packs, which may have three times the life of the current lithiumion batteries.
The electrodes were touted for the first time in the 1940 s, using one made of sulfur and another made of lithium.
They have been used in professional communications and military applications, but despite high hopes,
According to technical profiles, they have never succeeded in hitting the mainstream.
Part of the reason is that this is because they have some inherent problems, such as the loss of the ability to charge effectively in a relatively short period of time, and the safety problem, which means that if the metal enters, they can melt and fire in contact with the water.
However, Sion Power of Tucson, Arizona, says it has overcome these problems.
It has a prototype that, by weight, has an energy capacity of 50% more than the existing lithium.
The company said it plans to target markets including mobile phones and laptops.
In 2010, it received a grant worth up to $5 million from the US government for the development of safe, practical and economically viable rechargeable lithium-
Three-year sulfur battery
The company declined to give details of the technology it used, but said it had dealt with security issues.
As we all know, when a branch-
Like a growth substance grown on a lithium metal electrode, causes it to heat up and may become shortercircuit.
Prototypes seen elsewhere suggest that they may have achieved this by processing electrodes to block growth and adding plastic or ceramic membranes to separate the electrodes and prevent short circuits.
The company said it had also made progress on charging.
Its prototype can maintain capacity of more than 50 times, but it claims it is expected to reach 1,000 cycles soon-the equivalent of lithium today --ion batteries.
But some companies and researchers believe that despite a lot of research and millions of dollars invested, both lithium-based technologies are far from fulfilling their commitments.
So Professor Ceder at MIT took a more radical approach.
He used high-
Establish a public database of about 20,000 compounds.
A series of algorithms predict the performance of these materials, enabling researchers to quickly simulate how two compounds react to each other in batteries.
\"The nature we are talking about is the battery voltage that the compound may produce, the mobility of ions and electrons in the material, the chemical stability, the safety, he said:\" There are also instructions on how to make these materials. \".
It is well known that material items have been used to identify three new materials that are likely to be used for batteries.
He said more needs to be done in these areas, but his calculation method has been successful in another technology called magnesiumion batteries.
These use magnesium metal anode, and the energy density may be two to three times that of the best lithiumion batteries.
In addition, the tests show that they maintain most of their power during the 3,000 charge cycle, much more than today\'s smartphone battery.
Magnesium is also cheap and rich.
However, the technology is still not confirmed.
To be truly useful, researchers need to find a suitable cathode, which hinders previous efforts.
This is his calculation.
Professor Ceder and his colleagues have actually screened more than 12,000 materials.
Those that show potential are synthetic and tested.
At least four materials are currently being studied in detail.
He claims that a cathode material has shown performance and can make batteries with higher energy density than today\'s lithium ion technology.
He won\'t give more details, but it will be enough to attract great interest from investors and the US military.
He also made a start.
The up, known as Pellion Technologies, developed the technology, which was originally used for automobiles.
However, if he succeeds, the technology may penetrate into the phone in the next few years.
Apple juiceIf, when it does, it may have to compete with another powerful competitor for your future phone, the fuel cell.
Like batteries, they convert chemical energy into electrical energy through chemical reactions.
However, the work is more like a small engine that converts the chemical energy in the fuel into alcohol.
It is converted into electricity by chemical reaction with oxygen.
Just like the engine, they will continue to run as long as there is enough fuel and oxygen flowing through.
They are an ancient technology dating back to the 19 th century, for example, they were successfully used for the Power elements of the early Gemini and Apollo space missions.
But because of their high energy density, they have now attracted the attention of mobile phone manufacturers.
In short, fuel contains a lot of energy.
For example, the energy of hydrogen is nearly 150 times that of lithium of the same weight.
However, they need to be small in order to be feasible and have a fuel pool that is easy to charge.
To build these, researchers are looking at so-
Called microcomputer system technology
Make use of micro-mechanical equipment and structures created for the manufacture of early computer chips by patterned and etched technologies.
These have been used to make everything from solar cells to flat cells. screen TVs.
It is essential that these technologies have evolved to the point where they can now be used to build complex 3D structures, such as the channel and pipeline networks needed for small fuel cells.
The technology can be expensive, and precious metals, such as platinum and palladium, are used to accelerate chemical reactions, hydrogen sources, and take up a lot of space even in the form of compression or liquid.
There are also cases where the fuel needed to charge the phone has to be moved and stored on the go, not to mention dealing with potential issues with potentially toxic fuel calls.
However, companies such as NEC and Toshiba have shown prototypes for mobile fuel cells.
On December 2011, the news that Apple submitted two new applications for fuel cells for portable electronic devices once again sparked interest.
These applications suggest that the company proposes to use the reducing agent, borohydride sodium, to produce pure hydrogen when mixed with water, and that they will be used with batteries to reduce size, weight and cost.
The document shows that the technology can power the device \"days or even weeks \".
But according to Professor Bruce of St. Andrew, we shouldn\'t be too excited yet.
\"In the long run, these radical technologies can change the energy storage of consumer electronics applications,\" he said . \".
But he believes that in the next few years, lithium
Ion batteries stay here.
Better remember to pack the charger.
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