Indian researcher discovers faster way to charge laptops and phones in a minute

Ankur Gupta, an Indian-origin researcher recently revealed a novel technology that can help charge laptops and phones in a minute, additionally using the same way to charge one's electric car in ten minutes.

Ankur Gupta is a chemical and biological engineering assistant at the US-based University of Colorado Boulder. His team of researchers discovered and explained the technology in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The movement of ions—tiny charged particles—through a sophisticated network of microscopic holes was described by researchers. Supercapacitors and other more effective energy storage technologies may result from this discovery, according to Ankur Gupta.

"So how can we make their charging and release of energy faster? By the more efficient movement of ions," said Gupta.

Breakthrough Discovery: Potential to Charge Laptops and Phones in a Minute

According to the study, this finding applies not just to the storage of energy in cars and electronic gadgets but also to power grids, where the erratic demand for energy necessitates effective storage to prevent waste during times of low demand and guarantee a timely supply during times of high demand.

According to Gupta, several chemical engineering approaches are employed to investigate flow in porous materials, such as water filters and oil reservoirs, however, some energy storage systems have not fully used these techniques.

Gupta said, "Given the critical role of energy in the future of the planet, I felt inspired to apply my chemical engineering knowledge to advancing energy storage devices. It felt like the topic was somewhat unexplored and, as such, the perfect opportunity."

The finding also reinterprets Kirchhoff's law, a mainstay of science lessons for high school students, which has controlled current flow in electrical circuits. Ions move because of both electric fields and diffusion, unlike electrons, and the researchers found that their motions at pore junctions diverge from those predicted by Kirchhoff's equation.

Supercapacitors are energy storage devices with faster charging times and longer lifespans than batteries since they rely on ion buildup in their pores. The main attraction of supercapacitors, according to the study, is their speed. Ion motions were only discussed in one straight pore in the literature before the investigation. This technique enables the simulation and prediction of ion flow in a complicated network of thousands of linked pores in a matter of minutes.

"That's the leap of the work," Gupta said. "We found the missing link."

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