BEIJING, China – A team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in China has successfully managed to increase the speed of charging a lithium-ion battery to a rate of 5.6 minutes for a 60 percent charge, according to a report by TechXplore published on Thursday. They achieved this impressive feat by adding a copper coating and nanowires to the battery’s anode in order to effectively improve ordering.
Today, most anodes consist of graphite and are constructed in a non-ordered slurry which is not a practical method for passing along the current. In addition, the way the materials in anodes line up creates an issue related to the gap size between them.
To overcome these problems in speeding up charging, the researchers focused specifically on the anode. Here is what they did:
They first ran particle-level theoretical models to optimize the spatial distributions of different sized particles and electrode porosity. They then took what they learned from the models to make changes to a standard graphite anode. They coated it with copper and then added copper nanowires to the slurry. They then heated and then cooled the anode, which compressed the slurry into a more ordered material,” stated TechXplore.
Once they had upgraded their anode, the researchers affixed it to a standard lithium-ion battery in order to measure the amount of time it took to charge. They were impressed to find that they could charge the battery to 60% in just 5.6 minutes and to 80% in just 11.4 minutes. (The researchers avoided testing how long it would take to charge to 100% because doing so can cause damage to such batteries.)
The researchers did not specify how much such a battery would cost and when it might be ready for production. Still, the development is an exciting one for electric vehicles everywhere.
The study was published in the journal Science Advances.
