Electric car battery that charges within an hour on the horizon

By Mark Waghorn via SWNS

An electric car battery that charges within an hour could be on the horizon.

The fast-powering device will make the vehicles more appealing.

Currently, they take eight times longer to get going - putting motorists off the green-friendly motors.

The breakthrough potentially eliminates a significant roadblock that is holding back the widespread use of electric vehicles (EVs) and portable electronics.

Lithium-metal batteries hold great promise because of their high charge density. But they must be charged extremely slowly in order to maintain performance and avoid safety problems.

Slow charging is necessary to reduce the formation of damaging chemicals.

Now a team from the University of California has come up with a solution - seeding lithium metal crystals quickly and uniformly on a surface they normally do not like.

They grow dense layers that lack battery-performance-degrading spikes called dendrites.

Formation in battery anodes is a longstanding roadblock to fast-charging ultra-energy-dense lithium-metal batteries.

Senior author Professor Ping Liu, of the University of California, San Diego, said: "The special nano-composite surface is the discovery.

"We challenged the traditional notion of what kind of surface is needed to grow lithium crystals.

"The prevailing wisdom is lithium grows better on surfaces it likes - surfaces that are lithiophilic.

"In this work, we show that is not always true. The substrate we use does not like lithium.

"However, it provides abundant nucleation sites along with fast surface lithium movement.

"These two factors lead to the growth of these beautiful crystals. This is a nice example of a scientific insight solving a technical problem."

It enables charging of lithium-metal batteries in about an hour - instead of the customary eight.

The speed is competitive against today’s lithium-ion batteries.

Prof Liu and colleagues replaced the ubiquitous copper surfaces on the negative side, or anode, with a nano-composite surface made of lithium fluoride (LiF) and iron.

The crystal seeds formed from which grew dense lithium layers - even at high charging rates. The result was long-cycle-life lithium-metal batteries that can be charged quickly.

Current EV batteries are expensive - and require raw materials that are already facing supply chain issues.

A fast-charging battery could solve those problems. It would allow smaller batteries.

They would be more affordable and sustainable, that could be charged in minutes, so that travel time remains the same.

The study is published in the journal Nature Energy.