Speaker 0:  today, we're gonna look at a massive update to one thing everyone hates most, battery life. if you're tired of your phone dying or your smartwatch needing a nightly charge, you need to hear about this new breathing battery technology out of china that literally uses light to recharge itself. researchers of dunghua university have developed a new type of zinc air battery that solves the two biggest problems in tech, battery life and flexibility. by using a special catalyst that reacts to light, they've created a battery that is safe, bendable, stays stable for eleven hundred hours. this isn't just a better battery. it's potential replacement for lithium ion that could power the next generation of wearable tech and renewable energy storage. zinc air batteries, john. what do you think about these?

Speaker 1:  these are cool. i like this. so we've covered batteries in the past, but i don't think we've ever covered a metal air electrochemical cell like this. so this is cool. so zinc air batteries, they belong to a class of metal air electrochemical cells. and that generates electricity via the oxidation of zinc at the anode and the reduction of oxygen at the cathode using atmospheric oxygen as a reactant. so the architecture essentially gives them a high theoretical energy density and the potential for low cost, safety, and abundant raw materials. right? which has many advantages over the current lithium ion batteries. but slow oxygen electrochemistry and poor reaction kinetics at the air electrode, they've essentially limited their power density and cycling stability, which hinders commercial use in rechargeable applications. now the breakthrough lies in the design of the photo enhanced electrocatalyst for the air electrode. so researchers, what they did was they integrated, graphitic carbon nitride nanosheets with a carbon nanofiber network hosting dual cobalt active sites. so, specifically, the cobalt nanoparticles are encapsulated in carbon nanotubes and atomically dispersed. and so this arrangement forms, a directional charge transfer when exposed to light, which is super, super cool. so under illumination, the photo generated electrons flow through the conductive framework to drive the oxygen reduction reaction or orr while the photo generated holes facilitate the oxygen evolution reaction at the adjacent sites. so, the spatial charge separation, it reduces energy barriers and it suppresses charge recombination. and that results in an unusually small over potential gap of about point six eight four volts and enhanced kinetics for both oxygen reactions, which is factor, a key limiting factor in metal air systems. i love the potential for this. and so they've overcome the bottleneck essentially. right? and this is huge. what are your thoughts?

Speaker 0:  you know, a standard zinc air battery that pulls oxygen from the air to generate power sounds great. and this new version adds light sensitivity there, making a solar power mix with the battery supercharges a chemical reaction, making it more powerful and efficient. i think this is great. you know, current lithium ion batteries are rigid, flammable, degrade quickly. this new tech is flexible, can be bent, nonflammable, and holds a massive charge. so we'd see we could see this in wearables, smartwatches, health monitors that wrap comfortably around your wrist without bulky battery, block or, more safely, no more thermal runway or exploding hoverboards that use, safe water based ingredients or, like, ebikes that exploding with those, lithium ions. devices that last forty five plus days on a single charge, cycle implementation, those things are all possible with this. so i'm loving the concept.

Speaker 1:  yeah. me too. like, this is promising. so, obviously, there's scaling issues, and they're gonna have to address anodegradation, zinc dendrite growth, and long term cycle life, but they're common issues in metal air systems. but, obviously, they're gonna have to continue to develop catalysts, electrolytes, and electro designs, to get to some sort of a commercial deployment kind of state. but i think this has a lot of promise. are we gonna see it in the next couple years? doubtful. are we gonna see it in the next five to ten? potentially.

Speaker 0:  and let's not forget that it relies on light assistance. so the impressive stats, 310, milliwatts power density, happen when the battery is illuminated. we need to know well how well it performs in a dark pocket or at night or in your room when the lights turned off. making carbon nanofiber networks in a lab is one thing. making millions of them for iphones is a manufacturing nightmare that has yet to be solved. so i like the idea, but, yeah, they do have some hair, challenges to get over, but, you know, the power density is good. it still does well when bent. it holds that stable charge for over forty five days. actually uses a graphic carbon nitride you mentioned as a semiconductor that acts like a leaf to harvest light, allowing the battery to close that voltage gap, waste less energy. i'm really excited about this. the promise, this is the most promising step we've seen to our batteries that are actually safe enough to wear and efficient enough to power a green grid.

Speaker 1:  yeah.

Speaker 0:  so is the battery that go ahead. no. no. no.

Speaker 1:  that's i was just gonna agree with you. yeah.

Speaker 0:  so is a battery that eats light the future or just a cool lab trick? let us know what you think, in the comments below, and we'll keep watching this story closely.