Lithium-ion batteries of the future will be much better than current technology thanks to a breakthrough that will increase their life. The lithium-ion batteries will be improved with the help of carbon nanotubes that will prevent them to lose their capacity of charge over time.

The researchers from the Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, China, have used carbon nanotubes and they improved the silicon (previous attempts using silicon led to a faster degradation of Li-ion batteries) therefore they were able to grow CNT on the surface of mini particles of silicon and a small part of them produced sugar at very high temperatures.

The researchers compared the results between the use of silicon with carbon nanotubes and the new material made of sugar-coated silicon. The conclusion is amazing - the silicon in combination with CNT achieved 727 mAh per gram and the sugar-coated material dropped to 363 mAh per gram.