PCB Update: Student Uses Sand to Improve Battery Performance

Recharging your smartphone or tablet every day can at times be a hassle. This is especially true when you are away from home and have to rush to find a charger in time. The worst part is that over time, the battery life in your device will start to hold less of a charge and you will need to plug in more often. PCB makers continue to work on ways to make our devices more powerful and reliable. At the same time, a graduate student and researchers at UC Riverside have discovered that sand may be a possible answer to our repeated requests for longer battery life.

Using sand with a high percentage of quartz, the team discovered that purifying the sand and adding salt and magnesium led to the creation of pure silicon when heat is added. The result also had a porosity needed to improve the performance of batteries built with nano-silicon. In addition to boosting the quality of lithium-ion batteries in devices, this can potentially be applied to silicon-based batteries in electric vehicles and extend drive time.

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