Lithium and Nanotubes—Another Aspect of the Battery Revolution
Lithium and Nanotubes—Another Aspect of the Battery Revolution Electric cars need better batteries. That was the stumbling block that stopped Thomas Alva Edison. He invented the sulfuric acid and lead car batter that has been used for more than a century, but it wasn’t enough to compete with the Auto cycle internal combustion engine. Now, potential shortages of fossil fuels are giving latter-day Edisons another shot at moving the world with electric cars. One example is that Science Daily carried a story about another research initiative that could make a significant boost to the power of lithium batteries. The article (“Using Carbon Nanotubes in Lithium Batteries Can Dramatically Improve Energy Capacity,” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100620200808.htm) described plating alternate plus and minus layers of carbon nanotubes. (It’s so ironic that this hoped-for revolution might be built on techniques that would be familiar to electroplating technicians for two centuri...