In 2016, Mya Le Thai, a doctoral candidate at the University of California Irvine, made a significant discovery in a laboratory setting. While experimenting with materials, she developed a rechargeable battery that has the potential to last up to 400 years. This innovation could lead to longer-lasting devices like laptops, smartphones, and electric cars, while also reducing the number of lithium-ion batteries that end up in landfills.
At UCI, a research team was previously working with nanowires to improve battery performance. They noticed that these delicate wires often broke down after repeated charging cycles. A charge cycle occurs when a battery is charged from empty to full and then back again.
One day, Le Thai decided to coat a group of gold nanowires with manganese dioxide and an electrolyte gel similar to Plexiglas. Reginald Penner, chair of the chemistry department, remarked on the unexpected results when Le Thai began testing the gel capacitors, noting that the device continued cycling after 10,000 cycles. After a few more days, she reported that it had completed 30,000 cycles, and this trend continued for a month.
This finding is remarkable because typical laptop batteries last between 300 and 500 charge cycles. The nanobattery at UCI, however, managed to endure 200,000 cycles within three months. Even if the rest of the device fails long before the battery, the possibility of a battery lasting hundreds of years is significant.
Penner explained that Le Thai’s use of the thin gel layer allowed the battery to cycle hundreds of thousands of times without losing its capacity, which is unusual because most batteries fail dramatically after 5,000 to 7,000 cycles. He noted that this could lead to a breakthrough in stabilizing nanowires.
Since her discovery, Mya Le Thai has earned her PhD and currently works as the Principal Scientist at Enevate Corporation, a company focused on developing new battery technologies. She has also filed patents for her inventions, including one for “Cells with blocking devices for delayed heat propagation” in July 2025. However, nearly a decade later, the original nanowire battery remains a proof-of-concept in the lab instead of a commercial product. The cost of gold nanowires poses a barrier to mass production, though researchers are exploring nickel as a more affordable alternative.
This article was updated from its original version published ten years ago. What do you think about the potential of this new battery technology?
Sources:
Source: Upworthy, by Tod Perry