much more charge can be delivered, and then a higher degree of
utilization of the active material (about 85% vs. 30% of the commercial battery) is accomplished. In fact, the whole lateral area of
the nanowires is accessible to the electrolyte and thus available for
the electrochemical reactions. Similar conclusions were also
reached by several authors for nanostructured PbO2 thin films
[30,32,40e42]. In the case of conventional plates, because the
“dough”of powders has tendency to compact, the variation of the
morphology leads to a stable skeleton structure having scarce
porosity; as a consequence, the inner core is never in contact with
the electrolyte