Stanford's nanowire battery leapfrogs Li-ion

Stanford claims its latest advances in silicon nanowires have it building batteries with 10 times the capacity of existing Li-ion cells. Apparently people have been trying to stuff silicon -- which has a much higher capacity than existing materials -- into a battery for decades, but since it swells when charged with positively charged lithium and shrinks during use, the silicon has a tendency to "pulverize." Who knew batteries could be so dramatic? Oh, right. The advancement at Stanford, led by Yi Cui, builds the battery in the form of silicon nanowires, giving the silicon room to grow and shrink without damage. A patent is being filed, and Yi Cui is already considering forming a company or licensing the tech to a manufacturer.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 22nd 2007 7:12PM]

Actually, Japanese workers are paid as much if not more than US ones, so the "greedy unions are killing American industry" line isn't operative.

If you're looking to blame greedy people for the decline of American industry, look at:

a) the obscene compensation given American CEOs (Japanese CEOs typically make about ten to twenty times what their lowest-paid employees get, whereas for Americans CEOs it's more like 500 times what their lowest-paid people get) and

b) the obscene costs of health care and insurance in America (which is a big reason why companies like Toyota are eschewing 'right to starve and be uneducated work states like Alabama and putting their plants in Canada instead, even when the right-to-starve states throw hundreds of millions in incentives at them).