News - Mobile battery life could last for months, says research

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Scientists reckon they can make mobile batteries last 100 times longer.

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Read more.

surely this has been known for a while but it is avoided because of the cost of such materials?

Either the Telegraph article's author is a moron for completely failing to grasp the scientists achievements, or the scientists in question are morons. Energy usage scaled with volume? Wow. You've basically rediscovered Moore's Law. Congrats.

Call be stupid, but isn't this just stating the obvious?

Smaller components = smaller power draw. Generally.

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Originally Posted by AlexKitch

Smaller components = smaller power draw. Generally.

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Generally yes, as you say.

There are other complexities such a smaller components having higher leakage currents, and suchlike. This is why chip manufacturers made the move to "High-K" hafnium transistors in the last few years, because the previous transistor technology (silicon dioxide) leaked too much power as they decreased the component size below about 65 nm. But in general, Moore's law is pretty reliable in stating that as time passes, you get the same functionality for less power, due to the components getting smaller.

I think I need to read the paper, as the article doesn't present anything new. This was actually taught to me many years ago as a basic in my nanoelectronic lectures, the problem though is that if you make it too small and hence the energy required is small enough it actually becomes less than the surrounding ambient temperature energy and so you can't stop transistors switching on etc.