Crushed silicon can create a smartphone battery that lasts three times longer than current cells

Battery life remains a hot button topic for smartphone owners. To prove that, one needs only to look at the popularity of the Motorola DROID RAZR MAXX and Motorola DROID RAZR MAXX HD with their 3300mAh battery providing 21 and 32 hours talk time respectively, on a single charge. Owners of LTE enabled phones have seen how LTE connectivity consumes battery life so quickly that users need to carry an AC plug with them at all times. But researchers at Rice University believe that they have a solution. It seems that crushed silicon can help triple the life of lithium-ion battery, like the kind used on smartphones.

Rice University engineer Sibani Lisa Biswal and research scientist Madhuri Thakur found that by crushing silicon, you create battery anode that can hold as much as ten times the amount of lithium ions than the graphic anodes commonly used with today's batteries. According to Motherboard, the result is a battery with 1000mAh per gram with 600 charge cycles of two hours charging, two hours discharging. Current graphite anone cells can handle only 350mAh per gram. The secret is the use of porous silicon that has more surface area than plain crushed silicon and enables the battery to hold more cycles. The porous silicon powder is mixed with pyrolyzed polyacrylonitrile. Besides the University, aerospace giant Lockheed Martin is also involved in the development of the battery.

We don't know about you, but for many this can't be commercialized soon enough so that those with an LTE enabled smartphone can stop looking for an electricity fix every few hours. 

source: Rice, Motherboard via BGR