Toshiba has developed a new Lithium-ion battery which charges up to 80% of it’s capacity in just 1 minute. Toshiba’s prototype battery has a capacity of 600mAh and measures.8mm thick, 62mm high and 35mm deep. It was demonstrated in hard disc music player for about 10 minutes by charging 5 milliwatts in 5 seconds. According to a Toshiba Lab spokesman, the battery shows less than 1 percent deterioration in capacity after 1,000 cycles of discharging and recharging. The battery is planned to be available in 2006. Here are more details from the eetimes.com.
Toshiba achieved the breakthrough by using nanoparticles of several hundred nanometers coated uniformly on the negative electrode and newly developed electrolytic solution. This stable formulation does not react with lithium ions at the cathode in a manner that would lower the battery’s cycle time. The electrolytic solution and nanoparticles enable large number of lithium ions move quickly to the cathode and store in the particles in recharging mode. With the stable electrolyte solution, the battery discharges 80 percent of its capacity at minus 40 degrees centigrade, compared to 100 percent discharge at 25 degrees centigrade for conventional Li-ion batteries. In the high temperature operation, Toshiba reported that the capacity deteriorates by only 5 percent at temperatures of 45 degrees centigrade after 1,000 cycles of discharging and recharging.