Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are developing a battery that could charge your cellphone or laptop in a few seconds rather than hours and also might never need to be replaced.
Joel Schindall and his team at Massachusetts Institute of Technology turned to the capacitor to make long charge times and expensive replacements a thing of the past. Capacitor was invented nearly 300 years ago, but Joel Schindall and his team made the connection between this old product and use of a new technology, nanotechnology, to make that old product in a new way.
Rechargable and disposable batteries use a chemical reaction to produce energy. "That's an effective way to store a large amount of energy," Joel says, "but the problem is that after many charges and discharges ... the battery loses capacity to the point where the user has to discard it."
But capacitors contain energy as an electric field of charged particles created by two metal electrodes. Capacitors charge faster and last longer than normal batteries. The problem is that storage capacity is proportional to the surface area of the battery's electrodes, so even today's most powerful capacitors hold 25 times less energy than similarly sized standard chemical batteries.
The researchers solved this by covering the electrodes with millions of tiny filaments called nanotubes. Each nanotube is 30,000 times thinner than a human hair. Similar to how a thick, fuzzy bath towel soaks up more water than a thin, flat bed sheet, the nanotube filaments increase the surface area of the electrodes and allow the capacitor to store more energy. Schindall says this combines the strength of today's batteries with the longevity and speed of capacitors.
This technology has broad practical possibilities, affecting any device that requires a battery. Schindall says, "Small devices such as hearing aids that could be more quickly recharged where the batteries wouldn't wear out; up to larger devices such as automobiles where you could regeneratively re-use the energy of motion and therefore improve the energy efficiency and fuel economy."
Schindall thinks hybrid cars would be a particularly popular application for these batteries, especially because current hybrid batteries are expensive to replace.
Schindall also sees the ecological benefit to these reinvented capacitors. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, more than 3 billion industrial and household batteries were sold in the United States in 1998. When these batteries are disposed, toxic chemicals like cadmium can seep into the ground.
Joel Schindall and his team at Massachusetts Institute of Technology turned to the capacitor to make long charge times and expensive replacements a thing of the past. Capacitor was invented nearly 300 years ago, but Joel Schindall and his team made the connection between this old product and use of a new technology, nanotechnology, to make that old product in a new way.
Rechargable and disposable batteries use a chemical reaction to produce energy. "That's an effective way to store a large amount of energy," Joel says, "but the problem is that after many charges and discharges ... the battery loses capacity to the point where the user has to discard it."
But capacitors contain energy as an electric field of charged particles created by two metal electrodes. Capacitors charge faster and last longer than normal batteries. The problem is that storage capacity is proportional to the surface area of the battery's electrodes, so even today's most powerful capacitors hold 25 times less energy than similarly sized standard chemical batteries.
The researchers solved this by covering the electrodes with millions of tiny filaments called nanotubes. Each nanotube is 30,000 times thinner than a human hair. Similar to how a thick, fuzzy bath towel soaks up more water than a thin, flat bed sheet, the nanotube filaments increase the surface area of the electrodes and allow the capacitor to store more energy. Schindall says this combines the strength of today's batteries with the longevity and speed of capacitors.
This technology has broad practical possibilities, affecting any device that requires a battery. Schindall says, "Small devices such as hearing aids that could be more quickly recharged where the batteries wouldn't wear out; up to larger devices such as automobiles where you could regeneratively re-use the energy of motion and therefore improve the energy efficiency and fuel economy."
Schindall thinks hybrid cars would be a particularly popular application for these batteries, especially because current hybrid batteries are expensive to replace.
Schindall also sees the ecological benefit to these reinvented capacitors. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, more than 3 billion industrial and household batteries were sold in the United States in 1998. When these batteries are disposed, toxic chemicals like cadmium can seep into the ground.
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