The quest for the perfect battery continues. Increasingly often called the Holy Grail of energy storage, it needs to be energy dense, cheap, and durable. Existing batteries usually fail in at least one of these respects, with lithium-ion ones being on the expensive side despite their energy density and durability, and lead-acid batteries, for example, having short lives and low energy density. Now a team of scientists from Stanford say they may have come up with the Holy Grail: a battery that is simultaneously energy dense, cheap, and durable. An important bonus is that the battery is easily scalable. The battery developed by the lab of a materials science professor, Yi Cui, and his team, led by Wei Chen, uses manganese as electrolyte in a water-based solution. When the battery charges, electrolysis breaks down the water from the solution into hydrogen and oxygen. The manganese from the electrolyte solution […]