South Korean scientists have developed a new material for a rechargeable battery that can be fully charged in minutes. This will overcome the limitations of the existing lithium-ion batteries. The group of scientists include students of the Ulsan university: Lee Sang-han, Cho Yong-hyun, Song Hyun-kon and Lee Kyu-tae. Their paper, titled “Carbon-Coated Single-Crystal LiMn2O4 Nanoparticle Clusters as Cathode Material for High-Energy and High-Power Lithium-Ion Batteries,” was published earlier this month in the international edition of the weekly journal Angewandte Chemie.
This development is very useful for electric vehicles using lithium-ion batteries. Those kinds of batteries take a couple of hours to recharge. Conventional batteries use powdered nanoparticle materials to form a dense, multi-layered structure that can store and give off energy. On the other hand, this new battery uses the same type of nanoparticle materials that were resolved in a solution with graphite. This will later be carbonized to form a dense network of conductors all throughout the electrodes of the battery. This will enable all the energy-holding particles of the new battery to begin recharging in order from the outermost particles to the innermost. In short, that the particles will recharging at the same time.
This new battery has done its purpose of convenience and improvement of human lives. It cuts fown the charging time of the new battery to 1/30 to 1/120 of the charging time for conventional batteries. We hope that the technology would extend to mobile devices, as well.
(source)
