T3 India

technology

Accidentally invented battery has the power to keep working forever

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A team of researchers working at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) has accidentally invented a laptop battery that has the power to seemingly last forever, and it could change the landscape of commercial computing forever.

Usually, laptop batteries have a charge cycle that supports between 300 and 500 uses, from zero battery to full charge, before eventually failing or degrading beyond safe use.

The UCI nanobattery, however, supported 2,00,000 charge cycles in test conditions over a three-month period. It performed, “with 94–96 per cent average Coulombic efficiency,” according to the team behind the wonder battery – in other words, it was still operating like a near brand new one at the end of it.

It’s a pretty impressive set of figures, especially when you consider it was discovered by pure chance. UCI doctoral candidate Mya Le Thai was the one who made the inadvertent invention a reality when she coated a set of gold nanowires in manganese dioxide, then applied a “Plexiglas-like”, electrolyte gel.

These nanowires usually degrade after limited use, but when the researchers at UCI tested Mya’s versions, they found they were almost entirely intact and ready for further use.

Sadly, the nanobattery itself is still very much in the developmental stage, meaning it’s probably a long way from integration into the commercial market, but when it finally does see the light of day, it could change the landscape of laptop battery use (and much more) forever.

Via: The Drive

Invisibility cloaks are a real thing, wands not so much

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Engineers at the Lawrence Barkley National Laboratory have created a super thin cloak that can bend light around objects, rendering them invisible. The catch, however, is that it only works on a micro scale for now so any prank ideas you had can be put on hold.

In tests the invisibility cloak used metamaterials to curve light around an object the size of a few biological cells. The difference between this cloak and previous attempts is that it can disguise any shaped object, and works in air. "This is the first time a 3D object of arbitrary shape has been cloaked from visible light," said Xiang Zhang, who worked on the device.

"Our ultra-thin cloak now looks like a coat. It is easy to design and implement, and is potentially scalable for hiding macroscopic objects."

That last part is what excites us. A full-blown invisibility cloak could have plenty of real-world applications aside from pranking, notably the military. Wearable tech is coming to the battlefield, would invisibility cloaks be a step too far? I mean, they’ve already got invisible tanks (well, sort of).