“There seems to be a never-ending stream of new battery technologies looking to replace the venerable lithium-ion chemistry,” Brandon Hill reports for HotHardware. “Today, new advances in zinc-air batteries are making them look increasingly more viable as a suitable replacement, with the potential to squeeze five time the charge into a battery comparably sized to its lithium-ion counterpart.”
“The breakthrough comes from researchers working at University of Sydney and the Nanyang Technological University,” Hill reports. “The new method uses a three-stage process that tosses expensive metal catalysts (i.e. platinum, iridium oxide) in favor or cheaper and more common alternatives like cobalt, nickel or iron. And with a more refined manufacturing process, the researchers were able to more intricately control the composition, size and crystallinity of these catalysts to build robust rechargeable zinc-air batteries.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Every battery story starts out so promising and then ends in exactly the same way: Wah-wah, maybe someday.
As always, here’s hoping for a battery breakthrough!
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