Battery technology has been one of the slowest moving of all technologies over the last 100 years. As we have said before, there was no real need for things to change for many of those years. It's only recently that researchers have been challenged to come up with chemistries that might enable smaller batteries capable of holding more charge for longer periods.
And it looks like these teams are trying to make up for lost time, judging by the recent flurry of battery related research news. We've seen teams working on recycling polystyrene packaging into carbon electrodes, progress made on cathodes for lithium sulphur batteries and Dyson investing $15million into solid state battery technology. Now, a team from Stanford University says it has developed a prototype aluminium battery that recharges in a minute.
Is it possible that, after decades of leaking zinc-carbon batteries and similar, we might be closing in on chemistries that meet the needs of today's product developers?
