The batteries in hybrid cars are responsible for the better fuel economy that’s become central to the technology. They power the electric motor, which typically propels a hybrid car at lower speeds. This puts less pressure on the gasoline engine and stretches out the amount of fuel a vehicle burns in between trips to the gas station.

But the chemical material that makes up all car dell inspiron 640m battery,dell inspiron 700m battery, whether it’s a conventional car or a hybrid, is typically toxic. Currently, there are far fewer hybrid cars on the road than conventional cars; however, concerns have been raised that if the number of hybrid cars increase, landfills will soon overflow with toxic batteries that are full of corrosive and carcinogenic materials.

There are three major types of batteries that companies use or are considering for use in hybrid cars: lead-acid, nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) and lithium-ion (Li-ion). By far, lead-acid is considered the most toxic of the three, and on top of that it’s also extremely heavy, reducing some of the fuel efficiency gains from the electric motor. Lead-acid is becoming less of a contender in the hybrid car battery market and is being replaced by nickel-metal hydride. Nickel is less toxic than lead, but it’s not without its own problems — it’s potentially carcinogenic and the mining process is considered hazardous. Since they’re the least toxic, many consider lithium-ion dell inspiron 710m battery,dell inspiron 8500 battery to be the next step for hybrid car batteries. In fact, car companies are investing millions of dollars in research for a working hybrid car battery that uses the same kind of power currently found in laptops and MP3 players.

Such batteries in modern electric cars, for example, have a lot of energy, so you can drive at 55 miles an hour for a long time, but you can’t accelerate quickly.

So what’s the problem? Scientists have thought the lithium ions responsible, along with electrons, for carrying charge across the dell inspiron 640m battery,dell inspiron 700m battery simply move too slowly through the material. But about 5 years ago, Gerbrand Ceder, a professor of materials science and engineering the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his colleagues made computer calculations of the commonly used battery material lithium iron phosphate, which predicted that the lithium ions should actually be moving extremely quickly.

“If transport of the lithium ions was so fast, something else had to be the problem,” Ceder said.

Now, he and his coworkers have re-engineered a well-known dell inspiron 710m battery,dell inspiron 8500 battery material to allow electrical energy to pass rapidly through it, which could usher in smaller, lighter batteries that allow cell phones and other devices to recharge almost instantly.

“The ability to charge and discharge batteries in a matter of seconds rather than hours may open up new technological applications and induce lifestyle changes,” Ceder and graduate student Byoungwoo Kang conclude in a recent report on the process.

It turns out lithium ions can indeed move very quickly in dell inspiron 8600 battery,dell inspiron 9200 battery material but only through tunnels accessed from the surface. If a lithium ion at the surface is directly in front of a tunnel entrance, there’s no problem: it proceeds efficiently into the tunnel. But if the ion isn’t directly in front, it can’t move to access the tunnel entrance.

So, Ceder and Kang devised a way around the problem by creating a new surface structure that allows the lithium ions to move quickly around the outside of the material, much like a beltway around a city. When an ion traveling along the beltway reaches a tunnel, it is instantly diverted into it.

Using their new processing technique, the two went on to make a small battery that could be fully charged or discharged in 10 to 20 seconds (it takes 6 minutes to fully charge or discharge a cell made from the unprocessed material). And, Ceder says further tests showed the new material does not degrade as much other dell inspiron 9300 battery,dell inspiron 9400 battery materials when repeatedly charged and recharged. That could lead to smaller, lighter batteries, because less material is needed for the same result, he said.

Ceder believes the work could make it into the marketplace within two to three years.

The work, which was reported in the March 12 issue of the journal Nature, was supported by the National Science Foundation through the Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers program and the dell inspiron b120 battery,dell inspiron b130 battery for Advanced Transportation Program of the U.S. Department of Energy.