New Delhi: Indian-origin researcher Ankur Gupta and his team have discovered a new technology that could charge a dead laptop or phone in a minute or an electric car in 10 minutes. In the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers discovered how tiny charged particles, called ions, move within a complex network of minuscule pores.

According to Gupta, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at the US-based University of Colorado Boulder, this breakthrough could lead to the development of more efficient energy storage devices, such as ‘supercapacitors’. The discovery is important not only for storing energy in vehicles and electronic devices but also for power grids, where fluctuating energy demand needs efficient storage to avoid waste during periods of low demand and to ensure speedy delivery during high demand, Gupta said.

Supercapacitors, energy storage devices that depend on ion collection in their pores, have fast charging times and longer life spans compared to batteries, he added. As per researchers, the primary appeal of supercapacitors lies in their speed. Before this study, ion movements were only defined in the literature in one straight pore.

This discovery allows for the simulation and prediction of ion flow in a complicated network of thousands of interconnected pores in minutes, the researchers mentioned.