Juicy ‘bio-organic nanotech’ can turbo-charge smartphone batteries in 60 seconds or less

Most smartphone’s batteries don’t even make it through a single day, especially if the person using the phone is frequently sending emails, posting on social media, listening to music, watching videos, and calling and texting, among other things. We consider ourselves lucky if it lasts after lunchtime.

But the biggest problem isn’t so much the battery dying, but charging the bloody things – with most devices it takes a good couple of hours at least to fully charge it. This depends on whether you’re still using your device while it juices up, and if you’re using an original charging cable. It takes longer when you use fake ones, and you’re putting your device and yourself at risk.

Wouldn’t it be great if someone came up with a way to rapid-charge our mobile phones in say, a matter of minutes – or even seconds?

Say ‘hi’ to bio-organic nanotech, your new best friend

It sure would, and so it’s good to know that Israeli startup StoreDot is working on a new type of battery for mobile devices that it claims can be fully charged in less than a minute.

Watch this video to see what it’s capable of:

If true that’s pretty damn impressive company, but how on earth can it do it that? Well, it’s pretty complicated, but the company, which launched in 2011, specializes in developing ‘peptide-based quantum dots’ that were originally discovered during Alzheimer’s research at Tel Aviv University.

Quantum dots, for all you non-nerdy types, are nanocrystals of semiconductor material where the physical dimensions allow quantum mechanics to effect electronic properties. Still with us?

Previously, quantum dots were made from toxic materials such as arsenic or heavy metals such as cadmium, meaning they were unsuitable for commercial use. Now though, StoreDot has found a way to use bio-organic materials, making the technology safer.

“We were able to take the same peptides that participate in biological processes in our body and to create nano-crystals — these are stable, robust spheres,” explained Dr Doron Myersdorf, CEO and Founder or StoreDot, in an interview with TechCrunch.

The Nanodots are chemically synthesized organic peptide molecules that measure about 2nm in diameter. These are easily synthesized and show diverse electrochemical properties including red, green and blue luminescence. StoreDot’s previous focus was on creating faster memory chips, before it expanded to image sensors, and finally, better mobile batteries that charge faster.

StoreDot is showing off the fast-charging tech at the Think Next symposium in Tel Aviv. Though this is something consumers would obviously love to see on the next iPhone or Galaxy device, StoreDot says that the technology is still several years from mass production and market availability. The prototype is currently way too bulky, and according to Myersdorf, it will take one year for the company to replicate the technology at a smaller scale, and after that it’s still got to build a battery that actually fits inside one of today’s typical slim and sexy smartphones. And even after this, Myersdorf says we can expect to wait another two years to reach the required energy density so that our super-fast charging batteries can last for the entire day.

All of this means that we probably won’t see these fast-charging batteries in devices until at least 2016 at the earliest, and even then that’ll only be the case if OEMs are open to using this kind of technology.

“The only disadvantage is that the industry is not ready for it. The ecosystem is not ready,” Myersdorf says.

“This is a new type of material, with new physics, new chemistry, that is actually coming from nature… Everything we do we try to imitate and to follow and to let nature take its course. To create these nano-crystals we don’t need a huge fabrication facility. We mix some basic elements — like hydrogen, nitrogen, helium.”

StoreDot received $6.25 million in venture funding last year, and it’s hoping to make another $20 million in order for them to push forward with its bio-organic components. Samsung is said to be one of its early investors, which may mean its Galaxy devices will be among the first to utilize StoreDot’s technologies.

Myersdorf also pointed out that his vision for the company is for the industry as a whole to accept Nanodots as a “legitimate, viable, stable, cost-effective material” for use in semi-conductors, energy, storage, and displays, as it delivers advantages for both manufacturers and end-users.

ORIGINAL: Silicon Angle

Mellisa Tolentino

April 8TH