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Japanese electronics giant Hitachi has come up with an innovation to make batteries more long lasting.
London, May 16 : Japanese electronics giant Hitachi has come up with an innovation to make batteries more long lasting.
Common alkaline batteries have a positive electrode of manganese oxide and a negative electrode of finely powdered zinc, which has a large surface area to maximise the rate of discharge.
However, the flaw with this system is that, during discharge, a layer of zinc oxide forms around each grain of zinc, which acts as an insulator, degrading the overall performance of the battery.
Hitachi now plans to replace the zinc in the alkaline batteries with a fine powder of zinc/aluminium alloy, reports New Scientist.
While on the one hand, the aluminium tends to displace zinc within the zinc oxide layer, on the other, the electronic nature of aluminium (it has a higher valence than zinc) frees up electrons within the zinc oxide, making it a much better conductor.
According to Hitachi, this gives the battery better staying power, or in other words, a longer life.
ANI
