A LITHIUM-ION battery unveiled last week can recharge 80 per cent of its power in just 1 minute, and can recharge fully in 3 minutes. It also keeps more than 99 per cent of its original capacity even after 1000 test cycles of discharging and recharging. The new battery, from Japanese giant Toshiba, comes hard on the heels of another lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery from Altair Technologies of Reno, Nevada, that recharges in 6 minutes (New ÐÓ°ÉÔ´´, 5 March, p 27).
Toshiba’s breakthrough was achieved by coating the non-carbon negative electrode with nanoparticles. The company has not revealed all the details, but its approach appears similar to Altair’s in the use of tiny particles, which provide a surface area great enough to absorb and store vast amounts of lithium ions.
Toshiba have also included a new type of electrolyte solution, which when the battery is recharging allows large numbers of the metal ions to move rapidly from the positive to the negative electrode. There the lithium ions are absorbed by the nanoparticles without causing the electrode to deteriorate.
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The Toshiba prototype is the size of a cellphone battery and weighs 16 grams. It has a capacity of 600 milliamp-hours and an energy density of 150 to 250 watt-hours per litre, comparable to that found in Li-ion batteries used in cars.
Toshiba says it will commercialise a larger form of its battery next year, for industrial and automotive applications, including hybrid cars and batteries for emergency power supplies in plants and hospitals. Later it will target mobile digital products such as phones.
