Mushroom may power your future cellphones
Researchers
have created a new type of lithium-ion battery anode using portabella
mushrooms, which are inexpensive, environmentally friendly and easy
to produce.Nanocarbon
architectures derived from biological materials such as mushrooms can
be considered a green and sustainable alternative to graphite-based
anodes, said Cengiz Ozkan, professor of mechanical engineering and
materials science and engineering at University of California,
Riverside, US.The current industry standard for rechargeable
lithium-ion battery anodes is synthetic graphite, which comes with a
high cost of manufacturing because it requires tedious purification
and preparation processes that are also harmful to the environment.Using
biomass, a biological material from living or recently living
organisms, as a replacement for graphite, has drawn recent attention
because of its high carbon content, low cost and environmental
friendliness.The researchers were drawn to using mushrooms as a form
of biomass because past research has established they are highly
porous, meaning they have a lot of small spaces for liquid or air to
pass through."With
battery materials like this, future cell phones may see an increase
in run time after many uses, rather than a decrease, due to apparent
activation of blind pores within the carbon architectures as the cell
charges and discharges over time," Brennan Campbell from
University of California, Riverside explained.That porosity is
important for batteries because it creates more space for the storage
and transfer of energy, a critical component to improving battery
performance.In addition, the high potassium salt concentration in
mushrooms allows for increased electrolyte-active material over time
by activating more pores, gradually increasing its capacity.A
conventional anode allows lithium to fully access most of the
material during the first few cycles and capacity fades from
electrode damage occurs from that point on.The
mushroom carbon anode technology could, with optimisation, replace
graphite anodes, the researchers said.The study was published in the
journal Scientific Reports.
It will be really tremendous
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