A Glass Battery That Keeps Getting Better?

Is there such a factor as a battery whose ability to store energy increases with age? A person highly regarded team of researchers say they have formulated just such a technology. Controversy surrounds their statements, having said that, in section for the reason that thermodynamics might feel to demand from customers that a battery only deteriorates around a lot of charge-discharge cycles.

The researchers have a response for that critique and proceed to publish peer-reviewed papers about this do the job. If such statements arrived from nearly any other lab, they might be overlooked and shunned by the broader neighborhood of battery researchers, the similar way physicists convert their noses up at anything at all that smacks of a perpetual movement equipment.

But this lab belongs to one particular of the most celebrated battery pioneers today—and one particular of the inventors of the lithium-ion battery itself. John Goodenough, who at ninety six carries on to investigate and publish like researchers one particular-3rd his age, very last year joined with three co-authors in publishing a paper that grabbed headlines. (Spectrum had profiled him and his battery technology the year ahead of, next an initial announcement about his group’s new glass battery.)