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This battery can charge in seconds and lasts for a week

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CIOL This battery can charge in seconds and lasts for a week

Who doesn’t want a battery that charges in like seconds and lasts for a long time. Well, in a wish-fulfillment sort of a way, researchers at University of Central Florida (UCF) have successfully developed flexible supercapacitors which last 20 times longer than a usual lithium-ion battery and can be recharged up to 30,000 times with a performance as good as new ones’.

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"You could charge your mobile phone in a few seconds and you wouldn't need to charge it again for over a week," said UCF postdoctoral associate Nitin Choudhary.

Unlike lithium-ion batteries, supercapacitors work on the principle of electrostatics storing electricity statically on the surface of a material, rather than using chemical reactions like batteries. This is done using "two-dimensional" material sheets with large surface areas that can hold lots of electrons.

In this case, the scientists used graphene as the two-dimensional material. According to Yeonwoong “Eric” Jung, an assistant professor at UFC, the team developed supercapacitors by wrapping nanometer-thick wires with two-dimensional materials that created a highly conductive core which facilitated rapid electron transfer for fast charging and discharging of the material.

"We developed a simple chemical synthesis approach so we can very nicely integrate the existing materials with the two-dimensional materials," Jung said.

Before you start fantasizing, the research work is still in its nascent stage and not ready for commercialization. The team has currently applied and is trying to patent this technology, which could enable us to use our smartphones for weeks without recharging and would also allow for longer-range Electric vehicles that can be charged in minutes rather than hours.