turbo-charging batteries - lithium iron phosphate battery

With the growth of rechargeable electronics, natural gas has even been replaced
Power engines, they need big and powerful batteries.
Professor Gerbrand Ceder of MIT says they may need their own internal highway system.
Ceder and researcher Byoungwoo have developed a battery material that they say can discharge and charge at 100 times the speed of today's battery-
Fast enough to charge the cell phone battery in seconds, or to increase the power of the electric vehicle engine by 10 times.
In a paper they plan to publish in nature in March 12, the team described a new way to adjust traditional energy sources
Storing the substance lithium iron phosphate enables charged particles to enter or leave the battery faster than ever through the set path in the crystal structure of the material.
"The device should be able to charge as quickly as we refuel in the car," said Ceder . ".
"It's a big difference if you can drink something back to work in 30 seconds.
"In 2004, Ceder's team created a theoretical model of how ions in conventional batteries pass through lithium iron phosphate.
The results were surprising: they found that ions should travel much faster in matter than they actually do.
The bottleneck is waiting for the ion to find a way to get in and out of lithium phosphate particles, says Ceder, tunnel-
A crystal of this shape whose charge allows the ion to enter at one end and exit at the other.
The "eureka" moment of his research team is when trying to coat lithium iron phosphate particles in a glass film (
Lithium phosphate)
Only a few nanometers thick.
Ceder says the film is
The speed transmission system around the crystal, which directly shuttles the ions between the tunnel opening and the opening.
"It's like a lithium-ion highway, a kind of bypass road that gets around particles," said Ceder . ".
"It's great once we guarantee that the ions are transported quickly to the inlet in order to absorb the ions at maximum speed.
We immediately saw the power we had predicted.
"Ceder said the result could be a battery that can charge hundreds of times faster than conventional batteries and deliver energy to electronics at a faster rate.
The two researchers wrote in their natural paper: "The ability to charge and discharge batteries in seconds rather than hours may open up new technology applications and lead to lifestyle
Because this new technology only upgrades the existing battery material, not the upgrade.
Ceder said he is optimistic that faster and more powerful batteries will appear as early as 2011 based on his technology.
Umicorp, a Belgian-based manufacturer of battery materials, is equally optimistic that the company has been licensed for the technology. "What [
Ceder and Kang have]
Kurt van de pute, business manager at Umicorp, said: "This is done to really improve the performance of the material without paying a high cost . ".
"It's not just lab-scale work.
It is simple enough to expand to industrial scale.
Van de Putte said: "This means that this material can be accessed into power tools, even electric vehicle batteries, within a few years.
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