An Israeli research team conducted by Prof. Yair Ein-Eli at the Technion – Israel Institute of Science, has recently developed a new battery that is able to produce thousands of hours of charge from an abundant and non-polluting fuel source.
This new portable battery could replace the batteries used in hearing aids, due to its reduced dimensions (measuring about less than a third of an inch). According to the researchers, in the near future it can replace laptop batteries as we known them, allowing them to run for hundreds of hours on a single charge. The small devices could benefit of this technology within a couple of years. “This would take about 10 years more and be revolutionary,” said Ein-Eli.
The current prototypes of the battery have a silicon power source that reverts back to their original form as sand. “In the paper, we showed that at 600 hours it had used only 10 percent of the energy. So we are talking about 6,000 hours,” says the professor.
“Do you know someone or have a relative who wears a hearing aid?” asks Ein-Eli. “With a charge that lasts only a couple of weeks, people who wear these aids need to carry around a supply of batteries like a box of pills. Worse, they don’t work well in conditions with extreme humidity like in Singapore, or in regions with extreme dryness, like Arizona”, he says. The professor hopes that one day his new green battery to power anything from hearing aids to electric cars.
[Source: Israel21C]
