How This Student Accidentally Discovered Rechargeable Battery That Lasts 400 Years!

There's an old saying that luck happens when preparation meets opportunity. Every person on this earth either has or will make a mistake at least once in their lifetime, but every blue moon or so some of those mistakes can end up leaving you in a better situation than when you started. There's no better than that just like this student who accidentally creates rechargeable battery that lasts 400 years.

After playing around in the lab at the University California Irving, a doctoral student Mya Le Thai who initially made a discovery that could lead to rechargeable batteries which last up to 400 years.This means longer-lasting laptops and smartphones and fewer lithium ion batteries piling up in landfills.

Originally, a  team of researchers of UCI, were experimenting with a nanowires for potential use in the batteries. The original idea of the experiment was to make solid-state battery , one that uses an electrolyte gel , rather than liquid, to help hold charge.

“She started to cycle these gel capacitors, and that’s when we got the surprise, She said, this thing has been cycling 10,000 cycles and it’s still going to 200,000 times over three months without detecting any loss of capacity or power and without fracturing any nanowires',  She came back a few days later and said ‘it’s been cycling for 30,000 cycles." said Reginald Penner, chair of the University's chemistry department. 

Thai’s breakthrough is incredible, considering the average laptop battery lasts 300 to 500 charging cycles. The nano-battery developed at UCI survived 200,000 cycles in three months, meaning it could extend the life of the average laptop battery by about 400 years.

Source: Elite Readers