A new lithium-ion battery has been invented for electric car owners looking for a quicker way to charge their vehicles.
Researchers at Nanyang Technological University claim that their new battery can recharge to 70 percent full in two minutes, and that an electric car could be fully charged in 15 minutes, according to Slate Magazine. They added that the new batteries can be charged, drained and charged again 10,000 times, as opposed to current lithium-ion batteries, which can be cycled almost 500 times.
The team replaced graphite, which is usually placed on the battery's anode (negative pole), with a titanium dioxide gel. They then found a new way to turn the titanium dioxide particles into nanotubes in order to make the battery charge faster.
The dioxide was changed into tubular strands 1,000 times thinner than a human hair, and the gel is able to make reactions inside the battery faster, which speeds up the process of recharging, Mashable reported.
The research team says the new battery has a life span of 20 years, and that it will be extremely useful for electric cars.
The battery could take just as much time to recharge a vehicle as it would to fill up a gas tank, Mashable reported. The use of these batteries would also lead to a drop in battery disposal, which would result in a drop in waste.
Electric car owners may have to wait a little while to try out these new batteries since the team is aiming to make them commercially available in the next two years.
