For those lumbered with mobile devices without interchangeable batteries – like Kindles, for example – Singapore’s Nanyang Technology University has come up with what could be a very welcome innovation. According to the University’s press materials, a team there has “developed ultra-fast charging batteries that can be recharged up to 70 per cent in only two minutes. The new generation batteries also have a long lifespan of over 20 years, more than 10 times compared to existing lithium-ion batteries.”
The lithium-ion batteries normally found in mobile devices usually last about 500 recharge cycles … equivalent to two to three years of typical use, with each cycle taking about two hours for the battery to be fully charged,” the release continues. “In the new NTU-developed battery, the traditional graphite used for the anode (negative pole) in lithium-ion batteries is replaced with a new gel material made from titanium dioxide … Invented by Associate Professor Chen Xiaodong from NTU’s School of Materials Science and Engineering, the science behind the formation of the new titanium dioxide gel was published in the latest issue of Advanced Materials, a leading international scientific journal in materials science.”
Actual implementation of the technology in real devices is a little further away, though. “Prof Chen and his team will be applying for a Proof-of-Concept grant to build a large-scale battery prototype,” states the University. If they can make the technology work, however, it should find an eager audience. Despite the supposed long life of Kindle-style epaper devices, my ageing Kindle now has a battery life measured in minutes. With this and many other applications, a long-lived fast-charging battery will be a device-saver.
