Scientists Create Battery That Charges In Seconds and Lasts For Days (telegraph.co.uk)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Telegraph: A new type of battery that lasts for days with only a few seconds' charge has been created by researchers at the University of Central Florida. The high-powered battery is packed with supercapacitors that can store a large amount of energy. It looks like a thin piece of flexible metal that is about the size of a finger nail and could be used in phones, electric vehicles and wearables, according to the researchers. As well as storing a lot of energy rapidly, the small battery can be recharged more than 30,000 times. Normal lithium-ion batteries begin to tire within a few hundred charges. They typically last between 300 to 500 full charge and drain cycles before dropping to 70 per cent of their original capacity. To date supercapacitors weren't used to make batteries as they'd have to be much larger than those currently available. But the Florida researchers have overcome this hurdle by making their supercapacitors with tiny wires that are a nanometer thick. Coated with a high energy shell, the core of the wires is highly conductive to allow for super fast charging. The battery isn't yet ready to be used in consumer devices, the researchers said, but it shows a significant step forward in a tired technology.

Comments

yay math

[Anonymous Coward]

A quick search tells me a phone battery typically has a capacity of something like 1500 mAh, so "charge your mobile phone in a few seconds and you wouldn't need to charge it again for over a week" sounds like something on the order of adding 5000 mAh in 30 seconds.

That would mean a current of 600 amps, assuming 100% efficiency. For reference, USB 3.0 has a max of 0.9 amps, Lightning is a little over 2, a refrigerator draws 6 amps, and your household circuit breaker will trip at 15 amps.

Re:yay math

[Waffle Iron]

Without giving the voltage, those numbers are pretty meaningless. Power = Volts * Amps

Lightning has a huge power at 2A because it's millions of volts.

A high-end microprocessor can draw about 100A, but only at a little over 1 volt.

Your circuit breaker will trip at 15A, but at 120V. That's 1800W. If this capacitor is only charged to about 1.5 V like a typical battery, the 600A would only be 900W.

Thus, you could easily charge it from a standard outlet. It would require a beefy power supply similar to those in large servers, though. I think that most people would opt for a cheaper power supply that could still charge their phone in a minute or two.

Re:So, how often does it explode?

[CaptainDork]

Electronics guy here, and I was thinking along the same lines.

Capacitors are two plates, very close together, separated by an insulator.

We attach power up to the two plates and a static charge occurs between the two.

After we remove the power source the capacitor retains the static charge and would do so forever if it weren't for decay due to leakage across the insulator.

The "capacity" of a capacitor is directly proportional to the surface area of the two plates.

The voltage it can hold is defined by the arc-through point of the insulator quality and distance between the plates.

Sounds like they have all that figured out.

--

The advance in battery consumption has bottomed not been on the battery and breakthroughs on the efficiency of the device(s) that needs the battery power have pretty much topped out, as well.

This method could be a game-changer, but I wonder about factors that would degrade the integrity of the system, especially the distance between the two plates (punctures, blunt force, flexibility) and the shelf life of the insulators.

Those factors have always been a concern with capacitors.

Same questions as always....

[gestalt_n_pepper]

What's the volumetric energy density compared to lithium batteries or liquid hydrocarbons?
What's the storage price per unit of energy?
How easy is it to scale up production?
Is it dependent on rare or difficult to obtain materials?

These questions are the ones that *matter*. All else is detail.

Re:Same questions as always....

[burtosis]

What's the volumetric energy density compared to lithium batteries or liquid hydrocarbons? What's the storage price per unit of energy? How easy is it to scale up production? Is it dependent on rare or difficult to obtain materials?

These questions are the ones that *matter*. All else is detail.

The energy density is likely 40-70 times lower than lithium ion batteries in even the most optimistic sense. The power density may be ok to better than lithium ions for the few milliseconds it actually functions.

It's a bad summary

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't a new battery at all, it isn't a new supercapacitor either, its a method of making nanowire supercapacitors by growing them from 2D substrates.

But how do you explain that to Telegraph newspaper readers? Those readers won't understand that supercapacitors is already a mass market product, or that replacing batteries with them is already a niche thing.

So the Telegraph writes it up as 'magic battery', and Slashdot submitter echoes that.

Re:NOT A BATTERY

[BenFranske]

Note that TFS states that "The high-powered battery is packed with supercapacitors..." see the definition for battery responsible for why we call groups of electrochemical cells batteries... "a set of units of equipment, typically when connected together" which is based on the traditional usage for artillery batteries. So if there are multiple supercapacitors working together it's absolutely correct to call it a battery (specifically a battery of supercapacitors, instead of a battery of electrochemical cells). Note that I doubt that the author was actually thinking along these lines when they wrote the piece, but I would argue it could still be correct.