Better batteries from rice husk

Research in lithium-ion batteries (LIB) is booming because the industries that use it widely are growing in number and expanding in scale. There’s been a steady march toward increasing the charge-capacity of LIBs, and apart from uniquely innovative solutions, the prevalent tendency has been toward replacing graphite anodes with nanoparticulate or nanoporous silicon ones, increasing charge capacity by 400,000%. Manufacturing either isn’t especially difficult, but researchers from South Korea have found that nanoporous silicon dioxide exists naturally in rice husk. Treated properly, they were able to extract nanoporous silicon and use it as anodes in a high-performance LIB (CE 99.7% after 500 cycles). Here are more details.