Teenage girl creates tiny device that could charge a smartphone in 20 seconds

Teenage girl creates tiny device that could charge a smartphone in 20 seconds

When you’re out all day, it’s a huge pain to charge your mobile devices. Even if you remember to bring a charger and get lucky enough to find a free electrical outlet at a coffee shop, you still have to sit there for around an hour or so to get a full charge. 18-year-old high school student Eesha Khare invented a tiny device that could potentially charge a phone in around 20 to 30 seconds.

At this year’s Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Phoenix, Arizona, Khare displayed her tiny device. Referred to as a supercapacitor, the item is small enough to fit inside a standard smartphone battery. To demonstrate the device, she had it power a small LED — certainly not a power-hungry smartphone battery that dies before your train gets to your stop. Along with lasting around 10,000 charge cycles (as opposed to a standard battery’s 1,000), the capacitor is also flexible, so it can be maneuvered into oddly shaped spaces.

Khare’s capacitor (which we hope she’ll call the Khare Kapacitor if it ever hits the market) incorporates nanostructures to help store more energy per volume than a standard battery, hold a charge longer, and deliver a charge more quickly. After charging it for just 20 seconds, she was able to power that small LED. She hasn’t applied the battery to mobile devices just yet, but the theory has been tested, and that is the supercapacitor’s eventual goal.

The capacitor is also a solid-state device, making it more environmentally friendly than a regular battery, which could spill its liquid innards should the casing experience a rupture. The flexible nature of the capacitor should also help prevent it from taking severe damage. The device is also more temperature-stable than standard batteries, as well as more affordable. Along with powering your tasteful front yard LEDs, and hopefully mobile devices one day, the capacitor can also potentially be used in car batteries. This could be a boon for electric vehicles, making their power usage much more time efficient.

Khare won the Intel Foundation Young Scientist Award, which came with a $50,000 prize, which she plans on using to help pay for college and other scientific endeavors.

Like most revolutionary battery technology — such as increasing standard lithium-ion battery storage with the help of graphene-based nanosheets — there isn’t a definite timeframe for when (if ever) Khare’s capacitor will hit the market, or even if it can be successfully incorporated into consumer electronics. However, it certainly is promising that there’s a veritable deluge of battery advancements seemingly every month. The more frequently they occur, the more likely one will be applicable to devices we use.