Sick of waiting an hour for your phone
to charge before you leave the house?
Researchers at Nanyang Technological
University in Singapore have come up
with the best solution yet - a lithium ion
battery that charges to 70 percent in
just two minutes.
Even better, it also lasts for 20 years,
and will reportedly be available to the
public within two years.
Rechargeable lithium ion batteries are
already common in our mobile phones,
tablets and laptops - but most only last
around 500 recharge cycles, which is
around two to three years of typical
use. And at the moment batteries take
around two hours to fully charge.
The new battery drastically improves
this process, and will allow you to
charge your phone while you look for
your keys on the way out the door. It
would also help make electric vehicles a
more viable alternative to fossil-fuel-
powered cars, by reducing battery
replacement costs and allowing drivers
to recharge their cars in minutes.
“Electric cars will be able to increase
their range dramatically, with just five
minutes of charging, which is on par
with the time needed to pump petrol for
current cars,” said Professor Chen
Xiaodong who led the study, in a press
release. “Equally important, we can
now drastically cut down the toxic
waste generated by disposed batteries,
since our batteries last 10 times longer
than the current generation of lithium-
ion batteries.”
The breakthrough came after the
scientists replaced the traditional
graphite that makes up the anode (the
negative pole of the battery) in lithium-
ion batteries with a new gel material
made from titanium dioxide nanotubes
that they created themselves.
These nanotubes are a thousand times
thinner than a human hair, and they
speed up the rate at which electrons
and ions can transfer in and out of the
batteries, allowing for super-fast
charging. They also allow more energy
to be packed into the batteries. This
means that the battery can now offer
10,000 charging cycles, instead of the
usual 500.
Even better, the new batteries will be
relatively cheap, as titanium dioxide is
inexpensive and already readily available
in soil. The team has published details on
how they formed the titanium dioxide gel
in Advanced Materials, and have already
had the technology licensed to
eventually produce the devices. They
expect they’ll be on the market within
two years.
We literally can’t wait.
Source: Nanyang Technological
University

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