n recent years, the technology tycoon Elon Musk has promised us to conquer space, get from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 35 minutes thanks to vacuum tube transport and fill the roads only with electric and autonomous cars, among other ambitious Projects. Some of them are still in force; others, not so much. But that future to which the founder of PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX aspires goes through great energy needs that today more than ever call for new, more capable and ecological solutions. This is a requirement common to all the great technological impulse in which we are immersed: from a small smartphone to a large solar power plant, we need new energy storage systems, and that is why batteries have become the great obsession of the technological ones. The battery of the future is sought: more powerful, durable, safe and sustainable.

Elon Musk combines solar energy with rechargeable batteries

In our technological age, lithium ion batteries have become the common industry standard, used from cell phones to electric vehicles, and powering all of our portable devices. But they have their limitations. One of them, causing great commotion, related to security. In September 2016, a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 exploded and set the car in which it was charging on fire. Less than a month later, a commercial plane had to be evacuated when a telephone of the same model began to give off smoke. By then, dozens of cases of burning terminals had already been registered and the South Korean company had stopped production. Today we know that the cause of these explosions was in the design of the battery, and that the problem has affected other devices as well. And although these are anecdotal and very rare cases, they have caused great concern among users.
The explosion of batteries reveals a challenge: reducing their size more and more and at the same time giving them more capacity carries great risks. For this reason, there are already companies that have displayed the Anglo-Saxon thought think outside the box (which in Spanish would mean thinking in a different way) to face the problem and have changed the course of their efforts. Now the near future of batteries is not that they last longer, but that they can be charged much faster. The goal: get hours of use with a few minutes of charging.

Companies and universities in search of the golden battery

In recent years, companies and researchers have focused on fast charging. Qualcomm, the company that makes the brains of a large number of devices, has released successive versions of its Quick Charge charging system. The latest to date, version 5, promises a 50% charge in 5 minutes with 70% more efficiency. For their part, Samsung and Huawei offer their Super Fast Charging and Supercharge systems, respectively, for the same purpose.
Meanwhile, the researchers are exploring new ways to speed up the charging process, which depends on the speed of lithium transport between the electrodes. This, in turn, is conditioned by multiple factors including the design of the cells and the materials of the anode, cathode and electrolyte. Some research has found methods to speed up the movement of lithium, for example by adding large metal ions such as potassium. Faster charging is of particular interest for electric vehicles, whose use is limited by recharging time. However, fast charging systems have the drawback that lithium tends more easily to become immobilized on the graphite anode, which in turn degrades this electrode. This all results in a loss of battery function.