The GuardianScientists say they have invented a new battery that could fully charge a smartphone in just one minute.
The researchers have created an aluminium battery which they hope could replace the lithium models commonly found in laptops and mobile phones.
And as well as the “unprecedented charging times” of their aluminium prototype, the team said it was also safer than lithium-ion batteries as it was less prone to catching fire and more environmentally friendly than alkaline models such as AA and AAA.
Publishing the findings in the journal Nature, Hongjie Dai, a professor of chemistry at Stanford University, hailed it as a breakthrough in battery technology that went further than previous attempts using aluminium.
He said: “We have developed a rechargeable aluminium battery that may replace existing storage devices, such as alkaline batteries, which are bad for the environment, and lithium-ion batteries, which occasionally burst into flames. Our new battery won’t catch fire, even if you drill through it.
“Millions of consumers use 1.5-volt AA and AAA batteries. Our rechargeable aluminium battery generates about two volts of electricity. That’s higher than anyone has achieved with aluminium.”
The prototype was said to be more durable, withstanding more than 7,500 cycles without any loss of capacity and surpassing previous aluminium batteries which died after just 100 charge-discharge cycles, while a typical lithium-ion battery lasts about 1,000 cycles.
“This was the first time an ultra-fast aluminium-ion battery was constructed with stability over thousands of cycles,” the report’s authors wrote.
Dai added that lithium batteries could “go off in an unpredictable manner” and cited a ban by US airlines Delta and United on bulk shipments on passenger planes.
And the new design could be used to store renewable energy of the electrical grid, the researchers suggested.
Meanwhile, co-author Ming Gong said: “Another feature of the aluminium battery is flexibility. You can bend it and fold it, so it has the potential for use in flexible electronic devices. Aluminium is also a cheaper metal than lithium.”
Funny iv never heard of LI-IONs exploding in transport before. LI-POs will for sure.
So they act like this AI-ion is new, funny.
Must be the ultra caps are getting cheap enough and common enough so they break out their incremental tech and force that on you(via the corporatocricy) for the next 20 years.
Then they will issue a story about how this amazing new ultra-cap tech can charge in mS and hold a usable charge for 100x longer than AI-ION in half the size for .001 the cost and 20+x the cycles.
Then they will show you the ultra fast switching tech that harnesses the motion of flying through the universe and it is the size and thickness of a postage stamp, last for 100 years, never needs charging and can put out 100x the current.
oops. i might go missing.
i myself hope they replace the Li-Ion batteries which are listed as a hazardous product.. i have seen them go Hiroshima first hand and it is not pretty..
i had a 12V 9Ah Li-Ion battery pack to go off one night.. it was in a electric lantern that hangs beside my bed.. if i had not of smelled something funny and went to sleep like i had of then it would have went off above me while i slept..
it started to go weird after a charge.. i started to smell something similar to acetone..i traced it to the lantern and i took the battery pack outside..
i placed it in a metal box because they were hot. i thought id do like i do with most batteries that got warm, id let them sit till they cooled and weed out the bad cell..
well a few minutes later i started to hear popping and seen flashes of light on the curtains..
the batteries were going off like roman candles and throwing flaming pieces of the batteries over 40ft in the air.. and these are the same kind of lithium cells that are in laptops..
ever since then i have stayed the heck away from the lithium batteries.. what i seen was called thermal runaway.. and it turns out this happens a lot with Li-
Ion.. they are so dangerious that they have a Hazmat classification of 9 and deemed hazardous..
im just curious to ho many people have burned to death in their sleep from these stupid things. i would have probably been one of them if i had went to sleep b4 the batteries went nuts..
and Ryan, i would love a ultra cap with the capacity of a Li-Ion battery that can charge in a mS.. that would make some of the radiant energy technology a lot more usable.. just imagine some of Tesla radiant energy devices with a fast charging ultracap in it instead of a mica condenser. instead of a fast pop of a discharge youll get a longer discharge able to do more work..
but the aluminum battery is by no mean a new tech.. the performance just has no been up far enough to compete with most of the other batteries on the market…
im into earth batteries and crystal batteries myself.. the output on the cells is not much in the way of amperage, but they will do it for years for some .. they are fine for small applications like driving LEDs or running oscillation type voltage amplifiers….
i got a bank of 8 small crystal cells in series/parallel that i use to run a transistor AM/FM/SW radio.. have been using the same pack off and on for over a month..
very cool.
The mS was suppose to be plural. as in millisecondS.
Its getting much closer as of late. The price is down and the quality is up. The available voltage ratings are still kind of/very low but that is due to cost and the lack of producers. At least able bodied people are getting a chance to “play” with them and see what improvements are needed as well as possible.
Check out some of those competition sound off cars. They are really driving the ‘higher’ voltage ultra-cap market. These ‘guys’ are rocking a dozen 20,000F (20billionuF) ultras. NUTS. they cost thousands each.
I have heard of li-ion going boom, just not “new” ones. Good thing you knew what to look for and what to do.