One of the things that hampers the adoption of electric vehicles is range anxiety.  Drivers worry that they will run out of charge before they get to the closest charging station.   Range anxiety has lessened considerably in recent years as electric cars have incorporated larger and larger battery packs yielding driving ranges well over two hundred and even over three hundred miles.

With these extended driving ranges, drivers then turn their attention

to how long it takes to charge.  Tesla’s

Superchargers have gotten to the point where a car can add 75 miles of charge

in 5 minutes and 200 miles in less than half an hour.  Fast charging systems are improving the

charge times for other electric models as well.

Nevertheless, drivers would ideally like to reduce charging times to as

little as possible in order to provide the convenience experienced in gasoline

cars.

Researchers at Argonne National Laboratory have reported a mechanism

for speeding up the charging of lithium-ion batteries for electric

vehicles.  By exposing the battery

cathode to a beam of concentrated light, the charging time can be reduced by a

factor of two or more. If this could be commercialized, it could be a real game

changer for electric vehicles.

The research used specially crafted lithium-ion cells with transparent

quartz windows.  Shining white light into

the windows caused a semiconductor material known as LMO to change its charge

state and drive the charging reaction more quickly in the lithium ions of the

battery.

Using this photo-assisted technology in vehicle batteries would

require substantial redesign that would allow concentrated light to illuminate

battery electrodes during charging.  How

practical that is remains to be seen, but the payoff would be substantial.

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Shedding new light on the charging of lithium-ion batteries

Photo, posted June 30, 2018, courtesy of Open Grid Scheduler via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.