StoreDot-nanodot battery technology can charge your smartphone in a matter of seconds

What if charging your smartphone battery from empty to full just takes 30-40 seconds of your life. That would be such an awesome thing right?

An Israel based company by the name StoreDot demonstrated a new battery technology that could revolutionize the entire portable electronics and electric vehicle technology for the better at the Microsoft’s Think Next symposium in Tel Aviv on 7th April.

How it works 

In a traditional battery the voltage is developed by a chemical reaction. The time needed to charge the battery is basically the time required to reverse the chemical reaction.

The new battery technology utilizes electrodes made with new materials and are called MFE- Multi Function Electrode. The electrode basically acts as a super-capacitor on one side (with very fast charging), and on the other is like a lithium electrode (with slow discharge). The electrolyte is modified with what are called Nanodots in order to make the multifunction electrode more effective.

Tin could triple the capacity of lithium-ion batteries (Super Li-ion)

Lithium-Ion Battery technology hasn't changed much since 1991 when they first became commercially available. Although the devices that use them now need a lot more power to run than the devices that used them couple decades ago. And that's the problem why your smartphone barely lasts a day on a full charge and your laptop barley survives 3-5 hours before it needs a socket.

Researchers at the Washington State University have found a way that could triple Li-ion battery capacity plus make them charge faster and give them more charge cycles than existing Li-on batteries. A research group led by 'Grant Norton' a professor at the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, the researchers have filed patents on this nanoscale-based technology.

The existing Li-ion batteries utilize a graphite anode (positive terminal). The key difference that makes these new batteries better is the anode, instead of graphite its made of Tin.

Norton and postdoctoral researcher Uttara Sahaym developed the idea for this novel material a little over a year ago while working on a project to reduce the problem of tin whiskers. Tin Whisker are a major problem which cause damage to electronic components. These whiskers can sometimes grow as long as 10 millimetres, are a big problem in microelectronics because they cause short circuits and arcing that can cause severe damage to electronic components and reduce reliability. Despite the fact that tin whiskers have been causing problems for more than 60 years, researchers have been unable to come up with ways to entirely avoid them. The only popular way is to add lead to the tin solder material but lead has its environmental problems and its use has been restrained by the European Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS).

Batteries that charge themselves when given a shake

I have the Seiko 5 Superior Automatic wrist watch that runs without any batteries all it requires is a shake to keep it running no maintenance at all. What if that was same with most of your battery operated devices like your remote controls  led torches and other portable devices which run on AA/AAA size batteries. Thats what a Japan based company named Brother Industries Ltd revealed in an event (TEchno Frontier 2010) in Tokyo this past week. The company call it "Vibration-powered Generating Battery". The company mainly specializes in Printers and printing solution based products.

How It works?

Now when it comes to normal disposable batteries they consists of chemicals which undergo electrochemical reactions to generate electric current. The Vibration-powered Generating Battery however has no chemicals in it, it works on the electro-mechanical method like a dynamo found in a bicycle. The battery casing has a coil a magnet and a condenser (capacitor to store current). Whenever the battery receives a shaking movement the magnets slide up and down, a current is induced in the coil and is stored in the condenser for use. The batteries are not that powerful they can only run devices that require less power. The average power output is between 10 to 180mW  and the voltage output is around 3.2 volts from the two prototype batteries. It is good enough for a T.V.remote control which is under constant handling Brother industries said that for a T.V remote it would require a shake every 10-30 button presses. Not bad for a prototype.