All hail the nanotech battery! 22 hours of MacBook battery life; 400 hours of iPod use, 2500 hours of iPhone standby time!
Imagine… what if you could watch 70 hours of iPod video on a single charge. (OK, wait, that actually, might be a bad thing).
Instead, imagine something more useful, like getting 22+ hours of MacBook use. Or 2500 hours of iPhone standby time. Such is the promise of Stanford University researchers who claim to have found a way to use silicon nanowires to improve the way lithium-ion batteries store energy, delivering a reported 10x boost in capacity.
Above: Silicon nano fibers (A) can expand to 4 times their size when they absorb lithium (B), allowing them to hold more charge. (We think).
Creating a nano-powered iPod nano
As everyone knows, nano technology will eventually cure every disease and solve every problem known to man, and then create a race of super robots that will enslave us all. But before it does, it looks like we’ll be able to benefit from extended periods of all sorts of mobile gadget use.
According to lead Stanford researcher Yi Cui, this increased storage capacity could also make Li-ion batteries an attractive option to electric car manufacturers and solar power aficionados. “It’s not a small improvement, it’s a revolutionary development.”
You bet it is. Imagine, we may finally be able to listen to all 40,000 songs Apple says the iPod can hold on a single charge! Not to mention the 100 hours+ battery life we’ll get from Apple’s super-secret, not-yet-announced, ultra-portable, ultra-hyphenated, flash-based MacBook!
From ScienceDaily.
The coolest thing about this news, is that this technology could be realistically marketable during the next 2 to 4 years.
Can’t wait.
You might start listing the times in days or weeks rather than hours…
Nearly 15 weeks of iPhone standby!
2 weeks of listening to your iPod (for those of us trying to set a new record for staying awake…)
…
Just a thought… how long does it take to recharge it? Does it take 15 weeks to recharge your iPhone when you completely drain it? If it still only takes a few hours… you could just stick a solar charger or something ilke that on it… and durning the 15 weeks you use your iPhone, it’s able to easily get the few hours in the sun it needs to completely recharge. At this point, you don’t even need to think about it’s power source… to the average user… it just works! No power source of consciously deciding to charge it…
Only problem would be nay possible health problems from using nanosized wires in the battery. I don’t know what the risks are to lung function/cancer risk through nano wire and similar material if it got into your lungs/food chain
You better not eat your iPhone battery then :p, I suspect its currently very poisonous anyhow so the nano-tech is the least of your worries.
screw the lungs, I want my 22+ hours of laptop battery life. Admittedly it maybe easier for me to say that smoking like a chimney, but in all seriousness I’m not sure where the worry comes from as its not something I’ve seen before linking nano wire to any health problems – although no doubt it will be linked eventually of course!
This is great news, the guy is correct and isn’t exaggerating like people in his position often do, this isn’t evolutionary it really is revolutionary. I love the guys idea above of being able to charge quickly with sun or whatever whilst being used, never having to worry about power again would be so liberating – and at that point wouldn’t just effect laptops/gadgets, you could conceivably run a house comfortably without ever hooking up to a grid and for free no less – if only. For now, I’ll take the very extended battery/cell phone life and be very thankful for it.
might be good for hybrid cars too.
Screw thr hybrids. I got two words for you: Chevy Volt.
Rik Wagoner is either dancing on his desk or wetting himself with excitement. Or both..