By Anupum Pant
Researchers from UC Riverside are definitely onto something here when they say they have found that your humble Portobello mushrooms may have the answer to batteries that might actually get better with age. Yes, you heard it right. Better as you keep using them, and have electrodes made out of Mushrooms!
Using nanostructures from a mushroom and treating it with KOH and high temperature, the researchers made anodes from this natural highly porus structure which can hold a lot more number of lithium ions than your traditional synthetic graphite, thereby increasing capacity.
Moreover, since mushrooms are rich in potassium salts, as the batteries get used, more number of pores open up, thereby increasing the capacity more. Imagine having phones whose batteries improve charge times as they age!
The batteries made right now are no where close to what commercial batteries are, however this might be a great stepping stone for amazing batteries of the future.
[Paper]