Indian Origin Scientist Led Team Designs Nanosized Batteries Date:   Thursday , August 04, 2011 A team of researchers in the Rice University, led by an Indian origin scientist, has packaged lithium ion batteries, which power mobiles and smartphones, into a single nanowire. This discovery could be of immense value for new generations of nanoelectronics, as this can substitute as a valuable power source. Pulickel M. Ajayan, who did his B. Tech in metallurgical engineering from Banaras Hindu University in 1985, India and Ph.D. from Northwestern University US in 1989, had been inching towards single nanowire devices for years. The team first reported the creation of 3D nano batteries last December. "The idea here is to fabricate nanowire energy storage devices with ultrathin separation between the electrodes," says Arava Leela Mohana Reddy, study co-author and research scientist. The team's experimental batteries are about 50 micrometres tall, as thick as a human hair, and almost invisible when viewed edge-on. Theoretically, the nanowire energy storage devices can be as long and as wide as the templates allow, which makes them scalable. Although the nanowire devices show good capacity the researchers are fine-tuning the materials to increase their ability to repeatedly charge and discharge, which now drops off after about 20 cycles.