“Extremely fast charge” battery reaches 60% in less than 6 minutes

Extremely fast charging battery – By rethinking a key battery component, scientists in China have created what is described as “extremely fast charging” technology that sees a lithium-ion battery reach 60% capacity in less than six minutes. The breakthrough is considered significant for the electric vehicle world, where charging times lag far behind refueling times for conventional cars, and could make them a very attractive proposition on that front.

Led by researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China, the work focuses on one of the two electrodes in a lithium-ion battery, called the anode. This is of great interest to scientists in the field, because the redesigned anodes could offer huge performance benefits, which include storing much more energy and charging much faster.

One interesting possibility includes replacing the graphite and copper mixture with pure lithium metal, hailed as a “dream material” that could allow up to 10 times the capacity of current devices. Other interesting examples include introducing experimental nanobeads into the anode to increase capacity or eliminating the anode entirely to create a smaller, cheaper battery.

The authors of this new study sought to improve on the standard anode by designing a new porous architecture with graphite particles of a certain size scattered throughout. The idea was to address the unordered nature of today's anodes, which feature gaps that mean batteries don't lend themselves as well to fast charging, by using theoretical particle-level modeling to determine the optimal arrangement.

With the ideal distribution of particles of different sizes and spaces on the anode, the team also added copper nanowires and a copper coating and used heating and cooling treatments to form their new component. As reported on TechXplore, this anode was built into a standard Li-ion battery and allowed it to be recharged to 60% in 5.6 minutes and to 80% in 11.4 minutes.

Described as an "extremely fast-charging lithium-ion battery," scientists see the technology as a promising stepping stone to more desirable electric vehicles, pointing to the U.S. Department of Energy's "fast-charge goal" of 10 miles of travel. . per minute of charging.

The research was published in the journal Science Advances.