Electrode lets lithium batteries charge in just two minutes

By providing greater access to the electrodes, the authors allowed more ions to quickly exchange charge, resulting in a battery with a prodigious charging rate. The researchers increased lithium's transport within the battery by changing the structure of the battery's primary material, LiFePO4.

The new work also gets fast charges, but by a rather different route. The authors, from the University of Illinois, don't focus on the speed of the lithium ions in the battery; instead, they attempt to reduce the distance the ions have to travel before reaching an electrode. As they point out, the time involved in lithium diffusion increases with the square of the distance travelled, so cutting that down can have a very dramatic effect. To reduce this distance, they focus on creating a carefully structured cathode.

Source: Electric Vehicle News