New Battery Tech Can Charge Electric Cars Up To 90% In 6 Minutes

CIOReviewIndia Team | Monday, 26 October 2020, 09:06 IST

  •  No Image

This news can get another tweet from Elon Musk as a research team from South Korea has developed a faster charging and longer lasting battery material which can charge electric cars up to 90 percent within six minutes.

This is not like the conventional cars which use internal combustion engines. Electric cars are solely powered by lithium ion batteries, which the battery performance defines the car’s overall performance.

Though hurdles of slow charging times and weak power still reside, where research teams of professor Byoungwoo Kang and Dr. Minkyung Kim from Pohang University of Science and Technology, alongside professor Won-Sub Yoon at Sungkyunkwan University proved for the very first time that high power can be produced significantly by reducing the charging and discharging time withoug reducing the particle size.

Kang said, “The conventional approach has always been a trade-off between its low energy density and the rapid charge and discharge speed due to the reduction in the particle size."

Fast charging and discharging of Li-ion batteries, methods of reducing the particle size of electrode material were used up to this day.

However, by reducing the particle size, a disadvantage of decreasing the volumetric energy density of the batteries took place.

The research team confirmed that if an intermediate phase in the phase transition is formed during the charging and discharging, high power can be generated without any loss of high energy density or any reduction of the particle size through rapid charging and discharging, enabling the development of long-lasting Li-ion batteries.

By using the synthesis method, which is developed by the research team, once can induce an intermediate phase which will act as a structural buffer for dramatically reducing the change in volume between the two phases in a particle.

Adding to this, it has been confirmed that this buffering intermediate phase can help in creation and growth of a new phase within the particle, and improve the speed of insertion and removal of lithium in the particle, as said by the researchers.

The Li-ion electrodes synthesized by the researchers charged up to 90 percent in six minutes and discharged 54 percent in 18 seconds.

Kang said, “This research has laid the foundation for developing Li-ion batteries that can achieve quick charging and discharging speed, high energy density, and prolonged performance."