Silicon and carbon batteries have broken into mobile phones with one purpose: to catapult their autonomy

The progressive electrification that the automobile industry has embarked on in some industrialized countries is encouraging research into new battery technologies. However, this effort is not only benefiting electric cars; Electronic devices are also taking advantage of innovations that promise to improve the experience we enjoy as users.

Precisely one of these innovations has just arrived in the world of mobile phones, and it has done so with Honor. This Chinese company has surprised us during its presentation at the Mobile World Congress that is being held in Barcelona by announcing that it has prepared the first silicon and carbon battery in this industry. This is its promise: this technology increases energy density by 12.8% compared to conventional batteries with graphite anode.

Silicon and carbon batteries promise us more power in the same space

To understand what improvements this battery technology offers us, it is very useful to briefly review how a lithium-ion battery works like the one we can find in any of our electronic devices. Before we get into the flour, a note: this latest technology, that of lithium-ion batteries, hardly has room to continue developing. This is precisely the reason why a significant research effort is being made to overcome its limitations by introducing new ingredients into the recipe.

Let's go there. Each lithium-ion battery cell consists of two metal or composite electrodes that are submerged in a conductive liquid. This last component is the electrolyte, and usually uses a lithium salt that contains the ions that are necessary to propitiate the reversible chemical reaction that takes place between the cathode and the anode, which are the electrodes (an ion is an atom or a molecule which has a non-neutral global electric charge, so it is positive or negative).

The release of electrical energy occurs thanks to a phenomenon known as the 'redox' reaction.

As we have just seen, the cathode and anode are the electrodes of the batteries, and this simply means that they are electrical conductors that are in contact with a non-metallic element of a circuit. In the case of batteries, this non-metallic element is the electrolyte, which we can define as a substance that contains ions, and which, for this reason, acts as an electrical conductor.

The release of electrical energy occurs thanks to a phenomenon known as redox reaction (reduction-oxidation), which is a chemical process in which a set of electrons travels from one element to another, altering its oxidation state. In our batteries, the cathode is the element that undergoes the reduction reaction, and therefore receives electrons and reduces its oxidation. And the anode is the electrode that does the opposite, that is, it loses electrons, and for this reason, its oxidation increases.

One of the materials that some research groups propose to use in the manufacture of electrodes is borophene. It is synthesized from boron, which is a semiconductor, and is harder and more flexible than graphene. However, although its physicochemical properties make it an ideal candidate for the production of batteries, much research remains to be done. Silicon and carbon, however, are two well-known chemical elements for decades, so their introduction into the battery formula is easier.

What the new batteries that Honor has prepared offer us is simply to replace the graphite anode commonly used in lithium-ion batteries with a silicon and carbon anode. The key ingredient in this new recipe is silicon because its physicochemical properties allow the anode to store a greater amount of lithium ions. In fact, each silicon atom can bond with four lithium ions, so lithium ion batteries with silicon and carbon anodes can theoretically store up to ten times the charge of batteries with graphite anodes.

Sounds good. So well, in fact, that other industries are also looking at ways to introduce this technology into their batteries. One of them is the automobile industry, and some brands, such as Porsche, are making multimillion-dollar investments in these new batteries with silicon and carbon anodes with the aim of drastically increasing the autonomy of their electric cars.

FUENTE -xataka.com