New method could greatly reduce battery recharge time

Melbourne, March 24 (ANI): Lithium batteries are used in everything from computers to electric cars, but the disadvantage has always been long recharge times. Now, a team of scientists in the U.S. has come up with a novel way to dramatically cut the time it takes to recharge a lithium battery.

Dr Ibrahim Abou Hamad and his research team from Florida State University and Mississippi State University say that recharge times can be dramatically reduced by applying an oscillating electric field to a lithium battery's anode.

A lithium battery anode consists of a stack of graphene sheets, bathed in an electrolyte through which lithium ions diffuse, reports ABC Science.

During charging, an electric field pushes the lithium ions into the graphene sheets, where they have to cross a barrier to become embedded and stored, a process called intercalation.

Using a computer model, the researchers studied the movement of these ions and the forces acting on them.

They found that when the electric field pushes the lithium ions towards the graphene sheets, the intercalation process was limiting the rate at which lithium ions could cross the potential barrier into the graphene.hey could overcome this barrier by superimposing an oscillating electric field onto the charging field.

This not only helped the lithium ions over the barrier, but created an exponential relationship between the intercalation time and the oscillating field amplitude.

That meant a small increase in amplitude caused a big increase in intercalation.

The researchers believe this approach could mean faster charging times and the possibility of providing higher power densities.

The finding appears in the journal Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics. (ANI)