Amprius' New Silicon Nanowire Anodes

Hey Y'all--

This morning in Comm 435, I presented for our poster research project presentation. I researched Amprius' new silicon nanowire anodes for lithium-ion batteries. The traditional lithium-ion battery anode is made of carbon while Amprius' new anode is made of silicon nanowires. Silicon holds over 10 times more lithium than carbon in its' nanowire form because it has a bigger surface area for lithium to squeeze between nanowires. Researchers have known silicon has a larger capacity than carbon for years, but they have never been able to efficiently cycle the silicon.

This product is in its' first generation and is not on the market yet. This new type of battery will have major implications on the environment. For example, electric car sales have the potential to significantly increase because of the longer lasting battery. As you might have guessed, this will also lead to fewer batteries being disposed of in our landfills which will result in less hazardous waste in our environment.

This morning went so great. I was extremely impressed with everyone's posters. I presented to over a dozen students, my TA Zeynep, and Professor K. while answering each of their questions. I really enjoyed the opportunity to teach others about Amprius' new anode and I hope everyone enjoyed my presentation.

This was a great learning experience and I hope it continues to be a course project for future students.

Check out Amprius' website at www.amprius.com to learn more!


Erica

Tweeting during our Final Research Poster Presentation

Hey all --

This morning was our first day of Com 435 Poster Research Project Presentations. Half of the class presented their posters today and the other half (including me) will present on Friday. So, today I was part of the audience. Part of our responsibility of being the audience was to talk to at least three individuals and learn more about their topic and then tweet about their poster presentation. Today, I talked to Megan, Tracey, and Kristin (see twitter id's below) about their projects and that's who I tweeted about. They all did a wonderful job. I really like how they incorporated using Twitter in these two days of presentations. The only difficult part of this was many audience members didn't have mobile devices to tweet with nor were the classroom computers working but one. It was not a huge deal since there was a computer lab just two floors down -- it was just a little bit of an inconvenience, but oh well.

I am presenting me poster on Friday, so look for another blog then to read about my experience!

Erica

Kristin: @kristinmerrill
Tracey: @TraceyTodd1
Megan: @MegaBethOwen