Foam power: This lithium-ion battery cathode can be used to make a battery that holds as much energy as a conventional one, but can recharge a hundred times faster. Credit: Paul Braun
Posted on 04/18/2011 1:08:44 PM PDT by Red Badger
A new process could let your laptop and cell phone recharge a hundred times faster than they do now.
A new way of making battery electrodes based on nanostructured metal foams has been used to make a lithium-ion battery that can be 90 percent charged in two minutes. If the method can be commercialized, it could lead to laptops that charge in a few minutes or cell phones that charge in 30 seconds.
The methods used to make the ultrafast-charging electrodes are compatible with a range of battery chemistries; the researchers have also used them to make nickel-metal-hydride batteries, the kind commonly used in hybrid and electric vehicles.
How fast a battery can charge up and then release that power is primarily limited by the movement of electrons and ions into and out of the cathode, the electrode that is negative during recharging. Researchers have been trying to use nanostructured materials to improve the process, but there's usually a trade-off between total energy storage capacity (which determines how long a battery can run before needing a recharge) and charge rates. "People solved half the problem," says Paul Braun, professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Braun's group has made highly porous metal foams coated with a large amount of active battery materials. The metal provides high electrical conductivity, and even though it's porous, the structure holds enough active material to store a sufficient amount of energy. The pores allow for ions to move about unimpeded.
The first step in making the cathodes is to create a slurry of polymer spheres on the surface of a conductive substrate. Because of their shape and surface charge, the spheres self-assemble into a regular pattern. The Illinois researchers then use a common technique called electroplating to fill the space between the spheres with nickel. Next, they dissolve the polymer spheres, and most of the metal, to leave a nickel sponge that's about 90 percent open space. Finally, they grow the active material on top of the sponge.
"It's some distance to a product, but we have pretty good lab demos" with nickel-metal-hydride and lithium-ion batteries, says Braun. The Illinois group has made lithium-ion batteries that charge almost entirely in about two minutes. The method should be applicable to the cell sizes needed for laptops and electric cars, though the researchers have not made them yet.
"The performance they got is unprecedented," says Andreas Stein, a professor of chemistry at the University of Minnesota. Stein pioneered the polymer-particle templating method that Braun's group used. Braun's work is described in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
Jeff Dahn, professor of physics at Dalhousie University, is skeptical that these electrodes will ever end up in products. "When you look at the flow chart for making this structure, it's pretty complicated, and that is going to be expensive," he says.
Braun acknowledges: "There are lots of people coming up with elegant [electrode] structures, but manufacturing them is tricky." He says, however, that his fabrication process combines existing methods that are currently widely used to make other products, if not to make batteries, and that it shouldn't be too difficult to adapt them. The process would add extra steps to making a battery, but these steps aren't particularly expensive or complex, Braun says.
Braun's group will next test the electrode structure with a wider range of battery chemistries and work on improving batteries' other half, the anode—a trickier project.
Foam power: This lithium-ion battery cathode can be used to make a battery that holds as much energy as a conventional one, but can recharge a hundred times faster. Credit: Paul Braun
Ping!..........
Might be the salvation of the electric car.
can you kaboom ?
that much in that little time is dangerous
You are still storing the same amount of energy. Just transferring the energy/power to the battery quicker. Wonder what the amperage is for a decent size battery.
Yeah, maybe reduce the charging time from 8 hours to 4 hours. And it only adds $2,000 to the list price.
I have to agree. Although I hope this is a breakthrough, physics laws are there for a reason. I would suspect that Tesla would have figured out something like this 100 years ago if it was feasible.
That would definitely be a game-changer. Electric cars are still going to have to figure out how to extend the number of miles they get per/charge (I think the best ones out there barely get over 100 miles per charge). But, if they can reduce the charging time to several minutes - about the same amount of time it takes to fill a tank of gas - that would greatly help things.
It will be released in a few years, after retooling.
I participated in exactly such an action when DEC, HP, Apple and IBM all sat down together at a table and purchased a multidimensional laser matrix technology designed by a rube playing with a toy ring he got from a Cracker Jacks box when he was a kid.
My boss worked out the nondisclosure agreements that were signed when the payment contract was signed. He is dead, so I no longer care. Strangely misspelled my name, lefty.
Everybody watched everybody like a Mexican standoff with a room full of Thompson's.
What about discharge rates?
Well, considering Tesla died 40 or 50 years before the lithium-ion batter was invented, and 60 or so years before nano-technology was even conceived of, I wouldn't be so sure.
What goes in fast must come out the same way...............
This could really be a boon for solar power. One of the weeknesses of solar power is being to store energy.
If your house was solarized and you could store enough power for your needs in a couple of hours, it would bring down the costs quite a bit.
P = I x E
I = E / P.........
Wow, that would have been quite a thing to be a fly on the wall.
True, but this guy has almost mythical status in what he “conceived” that actually came true. And NO, I’m not a Tesla groupie. Tesla was born too soon. If he were born in 1960, he’d be richer than Bill Gates.
I remember a science fiction story from years ago about some wit who figured out a way to discharge a battery in a fraction of a second as a weapon.
A carbon-zinc “C” battery has about 8600 Joules, which translates to 8600 Watts per second. Or 86,000 Watts in a tenth of a second. Or 860,000 Watts in a hundredth of a second, etc.
But it was hard on the battery, only one shot per. But would burn a big hole in whatever it was aimed at.
It makes one wonder about how fast they can discharge, as well...
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