Joined: June 2006
|Anyway, it turns out that nanotechnology will be the key to our next generation of ultra-light, long-life batteries. Imagine a laptop that can go for a month without a charge, but weighs less than 3 lbs? The batteries exist but they cost $100,000 each at the research stage. The key is to use carbon nanotubes to position dual lithium crystals using chelation, similar to EDTA binding metals, like copper.|
That's really cool. I'm working in a ChemE lab this quarter, trying to create batteries with thin films (~10nm). We're using a polymer spin-coated onto a silicon wafer to suppress the crystallization (ruins the electrolyte properties of the polymer), and a scanning force microscope to probe the mechanical properties. The next generation of LEDs will most likely stem from the same research, using the crystal properties of polymers to draw thin nano-sized wires. The field is pretty much wide open at this point, as the technology has really only been utilized in the past decade or so.