Researchers at ETH Zurich University have developed a new type of glass material, which they claim would increase a smartphone’s battery capacity.
The vanadate-borate glass, made of vanadium oxide (V2O5) and lithium-borate (LiBO2) precursors, and coated with reduced graphite oxide (RGO), could be deployed as an electrode in lithium-ion batteries to boost a smartphone’s battery life by almost two times.
Electrochemical Materials Institute scientist Semih Afyon said: "Borate is a glass former; that’s why the borate compounds were used, and the resulting glass compound is a new kind of material, neither V2O5 nor LiBO2 at the end."
"One major advantage of vanadate-borate glass is that it is simple and inexpensive to manufacture."
During research, a battery with an RGO-coated vanadate-borate glass electrode demonstrated an energy density of about 1,000 watt-hours per kilogram, while achieving a discharge capacity that far surpassed 300mAh/g.
However, this figure even reached 400mAh/g initially, while declining during the course of the charge/discharge cycles.
"This would be enough energy to power a mobile phone between 1.5 and two times longer than today’s lithium-ion batteries," Afyon added.
