Scientists have formulated an all new way by which one can use sand to charge the phone. They have formulated a lithium ion battery that outperforms the current industry standard by three times.

Zachary Favors, a graduate student working with Cengiz Ozkan and Mihri Ozkan, both engineering professors at University of California, Riverside's Bourns College of Engineering have come up with this discovery.

This new sand-based battery would be a low cost, non-toxic, environmentally friendly way to produce high performance lithium ion battery anodes. For making these anodes graphite is the current standard material used, though its usage will virtually tapped out as electronics have become more powerful.

Nanoscale silicon was considered as a replacement for graphite but the problem with it is that it degrades quickly and is hard to produce in large quantities. This made the researchers to eventually crush the sand down to the nanometre scale. Then purification steps were taken up that changed the colour of the sand from brown to bright white and gave it a texture similar to powdered sugar.

This salt so generated acting as a heat absorber thereby removing the oxygen from the quartz and forming pure silicon, which further will be improving the performance of the batteries built with the nano-silicon.

By this the expected lifespan of silicon-based electric vehicle batteries increases up to 3 times or more.