Where can you get this magical battery? Unfortunately, when something is a prototype, it means we’re a long way from purchasing the device, which is from Israeli start-up, StoreDot (mentioned in my Dec. 3, 2012 posting about their bio-organic nanodots).
The prototype was well received at a Microsoft conference held in Tel Aviv according to an April 8, 2014 news item on BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) news online,
Israeli start-up StoreDot displayed the device – made of biological structures – at Microsoft’s Think Next Conference [held in Tel Aviv on April 8, 2014].
A Samsung S4 smartphone went from a dead battery to full power in 26 seconds in the demonstration.
The battery is currently only a prototype and the firm predicts it will take three years to become a commercially viable product.
In the demonstration, a battery pack the size of a cigarette packet was attached to a smartphone.
“We think we can integrate a battery into a smartphone within a year and have a commercially ready device in three years,” founder Dr Dorn Myersdorf told the BBC.
The bio-organic battery utilises tiny self-assembling nano-crystals that were first identified in research being done into Alzheimer’s disease at Tel Aviv University 10 years ago.
An April 8, 2014 news item on Azonano provides more technical details,
… StoreDot specializes in technology that is inspired by natural processes, cost-effective and environmentally-friendly. The company produces “nanodots” derived from bio-organic material that, due to their size, have both increased electrode capacitance and electrolyte performance, resulting in batteries that can be fully charged in minutes rather than hours.
For the more technically-minded, here’s how it actually works. Those multifunctional nanodots are chemically synthesized bio-organic peptide molecules that change the rules of mobile device capabilities. These nanocrystals are made from peptides, short chains of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Still with us? Here’s comes the really cool part.
StoreDot’s bio-organic devices such as smartphone displays, provide much more efficient power consumption, and are eco-friendly; while other nanodot and quantum-dot technologies currently in use are heavy metal based, like cadmium, and, therefore, toxic, StoreDot nanodots are biocompatible and superior to all previous discoveries in this field. StoreDot’s technology will allow them to synthesize new nanomaterials that can be used in a wide variety of applications.
Manufacturing Nanodots is also relatively inexpensive as they originate naturally, and utilize a basic biological mechanism of self-assembly. They can be made from a vast range of bio-organic raw materials that are readily available and environmentally friendly.
You can find out more about StoreDot on its website. By the way, those nanodot batteries are likely to be twice as expensive to purchase, once they come to market, as standard batteries according to the BBC news item.