Who Else Wants a Battery That Charges in 10 Seconds?
by Alex Vermeule posted May 20th, 2009 at 13:15
What if you could completely recharge the battery of your mobile phone or notebook in just seconds?
Soon this might be a reality as a group of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have revealed a new battery material that recharges 100 times faster than the lithium-ion battery you use today.
Evolution of lithium-ion
The storage of electrical energy is an important technology in our society. Today’s lithium-ion batteries are pretty good at storing energy and have a fine discharge rate. However, getting energy into them is still a relatively ineffective process.
The new battery material appears to make the charging process far more effective by creating a “fast-lane” for ions to move around the lithium iron phosphate material. By applying a special surface coating to the old material, they allow the ions to speed around the battery at rates that are nearly unimaginable
Promising no drop in capacity
Fast charging a battery requires running a large amount of current through it. This normally reduces the battery’s life and capacity. However, the prototype that was constructed with the special surface coating did not suffer from severe overheating nor did it show a significant drop in capacity after 50 charge/recharge cycles.
Ready in two to three years
Most energy-storage devices have a difficult time scaling out of the laboratory into production. Gerbrand Ceder is still optimistic. He leads this research at MIT and believes this type of batteries could make it into production in two to three years. The work has already been licensed by two companies; A123 Systems, a U.S. company focusing on sustainable transportation and Umicore, a company that supplies materials to battery manufacturers across the world.
Tags: Change, Inventions, Society, Sustainable Energy
Categories: Technology Innovation
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