Tired of waiting two whole hours for your depleted handset to recharge‾ In future, it may only take about the time it took you to read this paragraph.
MIT materials scientists Gerbrand Ceder and Byoungwoo Kang have discovered a new battery material that recharges 100 times faster than lithium-ion. According to the Wired Science blog, the material addresses the chief problem of battery-charging, which is how fast you can transfer energy into or out of a battery. By applying a special surface coating to the existing lithiumion phosphate material, researchers could create a \'fast lane\' for ions to move around it at \'unimaginable\' speeds.
The tradeoff for now: faster recharging times could also mean a shorter overall battery life.
\'High current means lots of heating,\' Rob Farrington of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory\'s advanced vehicle group told Wired Science. \'If you have high temperatures, you have to ask the question, are you detrimentally affecting the life of the battery‾ The answer is that it\'s going to shorten the life.\'