WASHINGTON — Need to charge your phone? Got half a minute?
Phones and tablets get smarter and capable of accomplishing more tasks, but the time it takes to charge the devices hasn’t improved substantially.
An Israeli startup company says its bio-organic technology can take a phone from flat to full in 30 seconds, and has a demo video to prove it.
The company, StoreDot, says the challenges right now are extending the battery’s power capabilities and figuring how to get the technology small enough to fit inside a phone.
StoreDot’s CEO and founder, Dr. Doron Myersdorf, tells TechCrunch that “We are about one year from a functional prototype that will be inside the device.”
The current prototype uses a battery pack attached to a smartphone, and it’s on display at the Tel Aviv Think Next symposium.
“In one year we’ll have reached the size, and in two years we’ll reach the required energy density for the entire day,” says Myersdorf. “So we are talking about three years for a commercial ready device.”
Faster, but also greener
StoreDot’s new battery and charger use what the company refers to as “nanodots,” which are derived from bio-organic material.
The nanodots are used the electrode, which stores the battery’s energy, and the electrolyte, which transfers energy between the battery’s anode and cathode ends, according to Time.
The company says nanodots allow the electrode to charge faster, but still discharge at a rate similar to current lithium-ion batteries.
StoreDot is also working on cadmium-free displays, in which the nano-crystal technology would be a cheaper and non-toxic alternative to present cadmium screens.
Even though the new technology could be cheaper and less toxic, the company’s CEO isn’t sure the phone makers would be interested in such a marked deviation.
“The only disadvantage is that the industry is not ready for it,” Myersdorf says. “This is a new type of material, with new physics, new chemistry, that is actually coming from nature.”
Myersdorf says StoreDot is considering building its own facility so it can manufacture its smartphone batteries, as a faster way of getting its product to the market.
“If we need to teach someone else how to change their facility, it might take too long, so it’s better to build this from scratch,” says Myersdorf.
See StoreDot’s demo, in which a phone is charged in 30 seconds:
