New ‘battery’ technology could mean phones last a week - and charge in seconds

The days of charging up your phone overnight every single day, and then hunting for a power socket in the late afternoon might be over.

A new technology – ‘super capacitors’ – could mean phones and electric cars charge up in seconds, and run for days.

Researchers at the University of Central Florida have developed a thin, flexible ‘super capacitor’ which they claim would allow a smartphone to charge in seconds.

The ‘super capacitors’ are created by layering shells of hi-tech two-dimensional materials over tiny wires – creating a material which can store a large amount of energy.

‘If they were to replace the batteries with these supercapacitors, you could charge your mobile phone in a few seconds and you wouldn’t need to charge it again for over a week,’ said researcher Nitin Choudhary.

Study lead author Yeonwoong ‘Eric’ Jung said, ‘’There have been problems in the way people incorporate these two-dimensional materials into the existing systems – that’s been a bottleneck in the field.

‘We developed a simple chemical synthesis approach so we can very nicely integrate the existing materials with the two-dimensional materials.’