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| Number: 29885 | Sun, 03rd Mar 2013 - 21:35 |
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| Battery Charges Cellphone in 5 Seconds |
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| Researchers have revealed a radical new type of battery that could charge a mobile phone or even a car in seconds. |
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Called micro-scale graphene-based supercapacitor, the device can charge and discharge a hundred to a thousand times faster than standard batteries, Daily Mail reported.
Made from a one-atom–thick layer of carbon, the battery can be easily manufactured and readily integrated into gadgets--and could even lead to smaller phones.
The team says their breakthrough could lead to faster charging phones and cars, but also smaller gadgets.
“The integration of energy-storage units with electronic circuits is challenging and often limits the miniaturization of the entire system,” said Richard Kaner, who is a professor of materials science and engineering at UCLA’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science.
To develop their new micro-supercapacitor, the researchers used a two-dimensional sheet of carbon, known as graphene, which only has the thickness of a single atom in the third dimension.
The team also found a way to produce the new batteries easily by using a standard DVD burner.
“Traditional methods for the fabrication of micro-supercapacitors involve labor-intensive lithographic techniques that have proven difficult for building cost-effective devices, thus limiting their commercial application,” El-Kady said.
“Instead, we used a consumer-grade LightScribe DVD burner to produce graphene micro-supercapacitors over large areas at a fraction of the cost of traditional devices.”
Using this technique, the researchers have been able to produce more than 100 micro-supercapacitors on a single disc in less than 30 minutes, using inexpensive materials.
For a supercapacitor battery to be effective, two separated electrodes have to be positioned so that the available surface area between them is maximized. This allows the supercapacitor to store a greater charge.
A previous design stacked the layers of graphene serving as electrodes, like the slices of bread on a sandwich. However, this didn’t work with electronic circuits.
In their new design, the researchers placed the electrodes side by side using an inter-digitized pattern, akin to interwoven fingers.
This helped maximize the accessible surface area available for each of the two electrodes while reducing the path over which ions in the electrolyte would need to diffuse.
As a result, the new supercapacitors have more charge capacity and rate capability than their stacked counterparts.
The researchers say people could even make the technology at home.
Source: Iran Daily
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