New Flash Battery Allows Charging in 5 Minutes; Technology Scalable to EVs
While the range, cost, and weight of EV batteries have improved considerably over the last several years, charging time remains a big obstacle to speed up global adoption of EV's. For this reason, Israeli company StoreDot introduced FlashBattery, a quick-charging battery that can fully charge in 5 minutes. The technology uses novel materials replacing the active graphite with metalloids such as Silicon, combined with proprietary organic compounds that protect the active materials during fast charging.
The company's unique technology combines nanotechnology with proprietary organic synthesis. StoreDot claims that its FlashBattery has the potential to become the ultimate fast-charging standard in industries including mobile devices, electric vehicles, power tools, electric toys, home appliances, and others.
Similar to known supercapacitor technology, flash battery charges faster than any other battery, but stores more power per second than any Li-Ion battery. This unique combination of fast charging and energy density has paved the way for the new-generation flash battery.
StoreDot redesigned an entirely new Li-ion battery structure for its proprietary flash battery using innovative compounds synthesized in its labs, to drastically reduce charging time while sustaining a full day of phone operation.
Any previously available rapid-charging solution is commonly known to shorten battery-life. However, the company's unique flash battery architecture withstands sufficient charge/discharge cycles, thereby allowing fast charging without having to replace the battery over the lifetime of a phone.
Advantages of Flash Battery
The company claims that its flash battery offers a remarkably rapid and efficient charge rate of 20x faster than standard Li-Ion batteries. It has low internal resistance (ESR) and enhanced energy density.
Flash battery allows uninterrupted smartphone usage with negligible charging downtime, thereby eliminating the trouble of searching for an electrical outlet and connecting the device for a long duration. The company also claims that its flash battery technology dramatically enhances user experience and changes mobile usage habits.
Safe, fast charging
Flash battery uses a multi-layer safety protection using StoreDot's proprietary non-flammable compounds, specially designed for high-current charging.
Instant-charging batteries for mobile devices
StoreDot used a unique methodology that enabled the company to design, synthesize, and tune materials to formulate proprietary organic compounds that drastically enhance the performance of a variety of devices, such as batteries, digital memory, sensors, and displays.
Competing technologies such as supercapacitors use heavy and toxic metals. By contrast, StoreDot says its organic compounds are non-toxic and environmentally safe. Furthermore, they are readily available and can be manufactured at a fraction of the cost.
StoreDot says that with its flash batteries a phone can be charged in 60 seconds and contends that its innovative, new generation of Li-ion batteries, completely redesigns the battery architecture and materials.
The engineered organic molecules have high chemical stability, and StoreDot can tune the flash battery compounds to match a variety of applications.
The flash battery demonstrates rapid redox activity, and its optimized compounds increase the absorption of lithium ions and their counter-ions. Unlike conventional batteries that contain toxic, polluting heavy metals, StoreDot's materials leave minimal environmental footprint.
A multi-layer safety-protection construction prevents over-voltage and heating, making it considerably safer than traditional Li-Ion batteries. With an ecologically friendly and proprietary electrolyte, the flash battery incorporates polymers and metal oxide combined, increasing electrode stability and SEI performance at high temperatures.
Flash Batteries for EVs
Fully recharging the battery pack for an EV can take several hours. Even at a dedicated super-charging station, you can spend 40 min or more.
A new-generation battery allows full charging in 5 minutes, offering a range of 300 miles. (See image above).
StoreDot is developing a new type of electric-car battery consisting of proprietary organic compounds - based on the innovative materials used in its flash battery for mobile devices. The EV flash battery will enable a charging experience which is very similar to fueling a gasoline car.
According to StoreDot, the EV flash battery enables full charge in 5 minutes and provides up to 300 miles (480 km) of driving distance, depending on the model of your EV.
StoreDot fast charging technology shortens the amount of time drivers have to wait in line to charge their cars, thus also reducing the number of required charging posts in a given charging station.
Charges an electric car in 5 minutes
The electric vehicle will have a pack comprised of hundreds of EV flash battery cells that can store enough energy for a full EV range on a 5-minute charge. So, for a 300-mile car, this translates to 60 miles on a 1-minute charge.
EV Flash Battery Cost
StoreDot also asserts that although the EV flash battery enables the remarkable feature of 5-minute vehicle charging, the technology will not increase the price of the electric vehicle.
As the manufacturing process uses traditional capital equipment, with mostly standard processing, the EV flash battery cost is aligned with Li-ion battery industry's cost reduction curve in the coming years, and it is expected to benefit from economies of scale of the industry as a whole.
Safe and eco-friendly
EV flash battery architecture is built with a highly stable electrode structure, and contains materials that are far less flammable and more stable at high temperatures than traditional Li-ion technology. Consumer safe, EV flash battery incorporates a multi-layer safety-protection structure. In addition, a flash battery is environmentally safer than a Li-ion battery, utilizing organic compounds and a friendlier aquatic based manufacturing process.
Li-ion batteries contain inorganic compounds in the battery's cathode, typically comprised of metal oxides or polyanions which are continuously recharged by the insertion of lithium ions. This process limits ionic conductivity, thereby diminishing the power density and shortening the battery's life expectancy. Moreover, the electrolyte used in Li-Ion batteries is highly volatile and flammable, posing a severe safety risk especially in electric cars.
With a unique multifunction electrode (MFE), StoreDot's FlashBattery incorporating the high-power rapid-charging rate capability of other technologies such as capacitors with the high-energy storage ability of conventional battery technology.
The electrode structure contains proprietary organic polymers, and metal oxide compounds of the cathode trigger the redox reactions. This solution enables ions to flow from a modified anode to a modified cathode at a speed that is much faster than existing technologies. Together with StoreDot's proprietary separator and electrolyte, this new architecture offers a high current and low internal resistance, with enhanced energy density and a prolonged battery life.
The company boasts that while some battery manufacturers were able to improve only one of the following properties - either increased capacity, fast-charging or extended battery-life - StoreDot's novel technology has simultaneously optimized these three parameters.
