Stanford University researchers are working on an Aluminum-Ion battery which will charge under a minute. The Aluminum-ion battery would be much safer than the existing Li-ion batteries and they would be safer to dispose off post their useful life. The Scientists expect the battery to be a commercial success and an inexpensive solution as well.
Hongjie Dai, a professor of chemistry at Stanford University said, “We have developed a rechargeable aluminum battery that may replace existing storage devices, such as alkaline batteries, which are bad for the environment, and lithium-ion batteries, which occasionally burst into flames”
Look at this video wherein Stanford scientists explain about their innovative product.
This product can provide a major breakthrough in the mobile market by eliminating biggest bottleneck of long charge cycles and battery guzzling devices working on 4G networks running multiple apps. The team accidently stumbled upon the use of Graphite as a Cathode for running the battery. The team observed that certain kind of Graphite provides very good performance for the battery.
The Anode is an Aluminum made with electrolyte as simple as salt water and the whole thing packed in a polymer pouch. If the process is commercialized the battery can find use in millions of handheld devices such as Mobile, Laptops, PDA, etc.
Apart from the fast charging the Aluminum battery is also very safe and it can work without any spark or burst even if the encasing is punctured. This will eliminate unnecessary concern of overheating and exploding batteries of phones. Another plus point with these batteries is their charge cycles. A charge cycle is the number of times a battery can be charged.
Aluminum batteries can support a total of 7500 charge cycles in comparison to 1000 cycles of Li-ion battery. Also as Aluminum is much cheaper metal we will see prices of batteries going down considerably if this technique is commercialized.
