New 3D Battery: Recharge you laptop, mobile phone in 1 minute

The big problem with nowadays’ batteries is that they charge and discharge slowly. They can be made to charge and discharge faster at the price of their shortened lifetime, but that’s not a solution at all. Supercapacitors may offer fast charge/discharge rates, but their capacity is just not very high. A hybrid of these two would be perfect.A team of scientists at University of Illinois has invented a new type of battery which can cut down charging time. 

Professor Paul Braun and his team has made this historic invention based on Nano technology and the details has been made available at 20 March, 2011, issue of the Nature Nanotechnology journal. 

Paul Braun, from the University of Illinois, has developed a three-dimensional cathode that may just be the solution for fast-charging batteries. “This system that we have gives you capacitor-like power with battery-like energy,” said Braun, a professor of materials science and engineering. “Most capacitors store very little energy. They can release it very fast, but they can’t hold much. Most batteries store a reasonably large amount of energy, but they can’t provide or receive energy rapidly. This does both.”

The new battery can charge an electric car in five minutes, a laptop in two minutes, and mobile phone less than a minute.

The battery will wrap a thin film int a three-dimensional structure which will increase surface area and increase the energy storage capacity as compared to conventional re-charging batteries. 

The battery will last for the same length of time as a traditional battery, but charging time will be reduced by 10 to 100 times, the paper said.