Super aluminum-graphene battery has a 5-second charging time
A team of researchers from Zhejiang University have developed a new type of aluminum-graphene battery that can be charged in seconds, instead of hours.
The team headed by Professor Gao Chao, from Department of Polymer Science and Engineering of Zhejiang University, designed a battery using graphene films as anode and metallic aluminum as cathode.
According to their research, the battery continues to be charged to over 90 percent of its capacity after 250 thousand recharges, far exceeding the cycle life of any other known battery configuration.
The battery can be fully charged in the span of just over one second as well, and can operate in temperatures ranging from -40 °F to 248 °F and is quite resilient to abuse, as it can withstand folding and is not a risk for explosion when exposed to a flame.
However, the aluminum-ion battery cannot compete with commonly-used Li-ion batteries in terms of energy density, or the amount of power you can store in a battery in relation to the size, according to Gao.
According to industry expert Zheng Jiatu he is doubtful of the results published by the team and said These figures must be read with some caution, noting that even testing 250,000 charge/discharge cycles would itself take a very long time.
He further said more efforts and input are needed from scientists to commercialize the aluminum-graphene battery
Team leader and Professor Gao Chao explained that “It is still costly to make such battery. Commercial production of the battery can only be possible until we can find cheaper electrolyte.”
If the battery could be applied to mobile phones, the selling point for Chinese mobile phone brands could be “five seconds of charge, two hours of calls.