MnO₂-coated batteries can now last 400 years, 200,000 cycles

Doctoral research student Maya Le Thai was working in her laboratory with nanobatteries one day when she decided to try a new approach. She coated an entire gold nanowire with a manganese dioxide MnO₂ shell and covered the assembly with a "plexiglass-like" electrolyte gel, but the resulting outcome was completely unexpected.