A team of scientists working at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) has discovered a new material that helps batteries in retaining 95% of their original capacity for five years (or even longer). The negative terminals inside current batteries use a binder material called Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF), and its performance isn't great. After just 500 recharges, typical batteries using PVDF lose up to 35% of the original capacity. This results in degraded battery life on smartphones after one or two years.
The JAIST team has discovered a new binder material called Bis-imino-acenaphthenequinone-Paraphenylene (BP) that allows the battery to maintain 95% of its original capacity for more than 1,700 recharges. This translates to around recharges for five years or more. Professor Noriyoshi Matsumi who led this study said, “The realization of durable batteries will help in the development of more reliable products for long-term use. This will encourage consumers to purchase more expensive battery-based assets like electric vehicles, which will be used for many years.”
This new technology can not only help smartphones, tablets, laptops, and wearables but also batteries inside electric vehicles. It will be extremely useful when implemented in modern smartphones that offer blazing-fast charging speeds. Whether or not this technology gets adopted by Samsung remains to be seen, though. But we hope that the South Korean tech brand ends up using this technology to put an end to our low-battery FOMO once and for all.
