KAIST has developed a battery that can be charged in seconds
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KAIST has developed a battery that can be charged in seconds

At a time when car manufacturers are struggling with production costs as well as battery quality, many of them are trying to find the best solution. Lithium-ion batteries are currently the most used on the market, but a new type of battery that is much more efficient has been talked about for a long time. These are sodium batteries that are more cost-effective and more sustainable because they can be produced almost entirely without rare metals. However, scientists from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have developed a hybrid battery that can be charged in a few seconds.

The journal Energy Storage Materials published an article about a new type of battery that can be fully charged and discharged in just a few seconds. This was achieved thanks to the use of materials used for supercapacitors (a type of an electrochemical energy storage systems which have great power density and specific capacitance), known for high charging speeds, but they can only store a very small amount of energy.

It is believed that the combination of the best properties of the sodium battery and the supercapacitor could be an advantage in the production of batteries that, in addition to the enormous charging speed, would have a longer range than the current ones. Thanks to the high power density, the vehicles could also use significantly more powerful electric motors.

Sodium batteries are already in use, but they do not provide a short range (250 km). JAC Yiwei EV is the first car equipped with sodium-ion batteries.

Source: Energy Storage Materials