Monday, August 10, 2015

MIT stumbles on an 'egg' battery breakthrough: triple the capacity, six minutes to charge!

Potential battery breakthroughs seem to be a dime a dozen these days, but what we are mostly seeing in retail devices are gradual extensions in battery life thanks to improvement of existing technologies, and/or the implementation of power-saving components. 

A new MIT research, however, is poised to shift the shovel-ready perceptions about battery breakthroughs by promising that their "shell and yolk" invention could be brought to market sooner than the rest. The new "egg" batteries are made with nanoparticles on a titanium dioxide "shell" and aluminium "yolk" for the anode, so, unlike current lithium juicers, they can expand and contract without degrading capacity over time as much.

The use of titanium dioxide and aluminum means that the battery can store three times as much capacity as current units in the same footprint with normal charging rates. On the other hand, the lack of severe expand-contract performance degradation allows for a full charge in about six minutes over the span of 500 cycles with capacity still higher than current Li-ion solutions - take that, Quick Charge 2.0

The MIT researchers discovered the phenomenon by accident, as all great research goes, and say it can be easily scaled for mass production, plus it will be cheaper to make than what we are currently using. Hear, hear.

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