Scientists Develop New Battery That Can Be Recharged to 70% in 2 Minutes and Lasts 20 Years

Scientists have developed a new battery that can be recharged up to 70% in 2 minutes and has a lifespan of over 20 years, reports Science Daily.

The battery was developed by scientists from Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore) and is expected to impact many industries, especially electric vehicles which suffer from long recharge times of over 4 hours and limited lifespan.


The battery will let electric vehicles charge 20 times faster than currently possible. Also, the battery can endure more than 10,000 charging cycles. That's 20 times more than the 500 cycles typical of today's batteries.

NTU Singapore's scientists replaced the traditional graphite used for the anode (negative pole) in lithium-ion batteries with a new gel material made from titanium dioxide, an abundant, cheap and safe material found in soil. It is commonly used as a food additive or in sunscreen lotions to absorb harmful ultraviolet rays. Naturally found in a spherical shape, NTU Singapore developed a simple method to turn titanium dioxide particles into tiny nanotubes that are a thousand times thinner than the diameter of a human hair. This nanostructure is what helps to speeds up the chemical reactions taking place in the new battery, allowing for superfast charging.

The battery was invented by Associate Professor Chen Xiaodong from the School of Materials Science and Engineering at NTU Singapore.

NTU professor Rachid Yazami, the co-inventor of the lithium-graphite anode that is used in most lithium-ion batteries today, said Chen's invention is the next big leap in battery technology.

"While the cost of lithium-ion batteries has been significantly reduced and its performance improved since Sony commercialised it in 1991, the market is fast expanding towards new applications in electric mobility and energy storage," said Prof Yazami. "There is still room for improvement and one such key area is the power density -- how much power can be stored in a certain amount of space -- which directly relates to the fast charge ability. Ideally, the charge time for batteries in electric vehicles should be less than 15 minutes, which Prof Chen's nanostructured anode has proven to do."