While every other part of our phone and mobile technology in general has evolved, battery technology really hasn’t. However, we have heard all kinds of advances in battery tech in the past year or so, although none are coming our way pretty soon. There’s now a biobattery that will be running on a sugar solution, and it’s said to have an energy-storage density of 10 times that of lithium-ion batteries. A research lab at Virginia Tech has discovered this. The research team is led by Y.H. Percival Zhang, who has found out how to synthesize a trio of enzymes and feed them maltodextrin to produce current. However the result is a fuel cell that could be powering devices within the next three years.
This research team believes that they could be commercialized just that quickly. Which is going to amazing to see. Imagine a battery the size of the DROID Maxx’s, but with a whole lot more power? Sign me up for that one. Obviously, Zhang and his team has plenty of obstacles in the way, like dealing with the water that’s produced as part of the reaction process. There’s also the issue of how to retain power output from an enzymatic fuel cell.
The research done at Virginia Tech sounds very promising, but as stated above, there’s still plenty of hurdles to jump over first. I’m really looking forward to the improvements in battery tech that we’ve been hearing about in the past couple of years. As the displays on our phones get bigger, and more pixels, and our mobile processors get hungrier, we’re going to need bigger batteries. Which means we need battery technology to improve as well, and sadly it hasn’t yet. How many of you are excited to see what kind of battery technology we see in the next year or so? Be sure to let us know in the comments down below.
Via: Geek.com
Source: ExtremeTech