Speed-Charge Batteries Thanks To Light

Scientists found a way how to speed up the charging of batteries. It will allow to speed up the charging process by two orders without damaging the battery thanks to light.

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Scientists from the Department of Energy of the United States of America presented a new solution that can increase the speed of charging batteries by a lot. A revolutionary discovery uses light for the first time and the light is an important part of controlling and affects the chemical process itself during the charging process.

Batteries are important. And they are only getting more important as technology is more and more involved in our lives. We use more and more mobile devices that need batteries and electric cars will only make the need for batteries even large with their need for batteries with a lot of charge that also charge quickly. And while the technology that increases the speed of charging is getting better we are still nowhere close to the time of just filling up your tank with regular fuel.

Charging a battery is a long process. If you don't want to damage or even destroy the battery you should charge it slowly – that is common knowledge. When fast-charging technologies came to the market we needed to change for example the cooling of batteries so the batteries do not get damaged. But the discovery claims that this process can be helped by a lot with light. All you need is a beam of concentrated light from a xenon lamp. That is enough to speed up the charging process by two orders.

The scientists figured out that light affects how much electrodes get damaged and thus opens the gate to faster charging. Special Lithium-Ion batteries were created and they are transparent near the cathodes. Testing a version without transparent glass showed that the original hypothesis was right and white light interacts with a common material used for making cathodes – LiMn2O4 (Lithium-ion manganese oxide also known as LMO).

The main reactionary part is manganese that changes its state from three-valence to four-valence during the absorbing photons. This makes lithium ions to move faster from the cathode. But the important thing is that the battery isn't getting damaged during this faster charging.

One of the goals of the scientists is to get the charging time of an electric car battery down under fifteen minutes. And this time may be pushed down even further in the future. But there are also problems not at the side of the battery. There is also the charger. At the moment we can see chargers with 350 kilowatts but the new batteries could allow for up to megawatts. But then we need better cables, cooling systems, and other protection systems.

Sources:

• https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12863-6

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