<p> <i> 20.00 pm </i> Silk could become main material in next-gen Li-ion batteries

From smartphones to electric cars, Lithium-ion batteries are everywhere these days, which is what is compelling researchers to come up new and efficient versions of them. Silk has now been discovered as the holder of a material that will boost the performance of such power packs.

Processing natural silk is a completely green way to come up with a key component that’s part of commercial Li-ion energy storage devices including batteries and supercapacitors. Graphite is the most commonly used material in the making of such products, and that is what will be replaced by the silk-based substance.

Researchers over at the Reseach Center of Materials Science, Beijing Institute of Technology have revealed through the journal ACS Nano, a process of preparing hierarchical porous nitrogen-doped carbon (HPNC) nanosheets. These can be prepared from simultaneous activation and graphitization of biomass-derived natural silk.

They can take the place of graphite in Li-ion energy storage devices to make them more efficient. It has been noted that these nanosheets are able to store a whopping five times more lithium than graphite. And this new invention was even tested over a long term, with the observation being that it went through over 10000 cycles and dropped just 9 percent in stability.

This research team from Beijing has so far inserted the silk-based material in prototype batteries as well as supercapacitors in a one-step method which they claim can easily be scaled up to produce thousands of batteries. Sure, they’ve demonstrated that mass production is possible, yet there are a number of factors that will prevent it from becoming a mainstream affair.

But credit goes to the inventors for finding a green material like silk to power up batteries that are used in almost every sector these days.</p>