Electronics & Semiconductors

Lithium-ion batteries that last longer in extreme cold

When temperatures fall below freezing, cellphones need to be recharged frequently, and electric cars have shorter driving ranges. This is because their lithium-ion batteries' anodes get sluggish, holding less charge and draining ...

Energy & Green Tech

How short circuits in lithium metal batteries can be prevented

There are high hopes for the next generation of high energy-density lithium metal batteries, but before they can be used in our vehicles, there are crucial problems to solve. An international research team led by Chalmers ...

Energy & Green Tech

3-D batteries pack power into tiny footprints

Batteries might seem like they come in every shape and size that you can imagine. But as electronic devices become tinier and skinnier without reducing their power and energy demands, they challenge engineers to design batteries ...

page 6 from 13

Anode

An anode is an electrode through which electric current flows into a polarized electrical device. Mnemonic: ACID (Anode Current Into Device). Electrons flow in the opposite direction to the electric current (flow of hypothetical positive charge)

A widespread misconception[citation needed] is that anode polarity is always positive. This is often incorrectly inferred from the correct fact that in all electrochemical devices negatively charged anions move towards the anode (hence their name) and/or positively charged cations move away from it. In fact anode polarity depends on the device type, and sometimes even in which mode it operates, as per the above electric current direction-based universal definition. Consequently, as can be seen from the following examples, in a device which consumes power the anode is positive, and in a device which provides power the anode is negative:

An electrode through which current flows the other way (out of the device) is termed a cathode.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA