Batteries to charge up in less than 20 secs
I always thought that a whole new battery technology would be the way to enhance our mobile power supply experience of techno-gadgetry, but it turns out it’s going to be good old Li-ion all along. Apparently, we’ve been doing it wrong all this time and that we’ll have one that can charge up in less than 20 seconds in two to three years’ time.
We know this because a crack team of battery bods at MIT has already managed to get one to work. The deal is that the lithium ions are stored in the non-chargeable areas of the battery and it was thought that the slow speed of power up was because the ions themselves were sluggish.
As it turns out, the ions are not slow at all, we are. They’ll move quickly but, so far, in battery design they’ve had to position themselves into small tunnels in the substrate, which has taken a very long.
According to the summary on techradar – considerably easier to digest then the full report – the scientists have now created batteries with a ring road, M25-type structure so that the ions can get to work faster. So, long as there are no lane closures along the clockwise section we should be ok, and at the least it’ll take the pressure of the Li-ion North Circular. The ions are then diverted directly into the tunnels and once there can charge as quickly as they always did.
Better still, tests with new materials have shown no degradation of battery material, meaning that not only are we going to get lightening fast charges but also batteries that last forever too. It’s a black day for computer manufacturers the world over. It’s a day of celebration for the rest of us.
I hearby pronounce 12th March international Battery Day. We shall celebrate in years to come by letting our gadgets run flat the night before and plug them in moments before we need them. We should probably drink beer too.
Thanks for that one Leon.
