Behind the scene: Prof. Joel E. Schindall, the Bernard Gordon Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and associate director of the Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems; Right: John G. Kassakian, EECS professor and director of LEES; and Left:  Ph.D. candidate Riccardo Signorelli.

MIT scientists say they're close to developing a new alternative to conventional batteries that could revolutiOnize how cars, cell phones and other gadgets are powered.

The net benefits of technological improvements to current "ultracapacitors" would be longer-lasting, faster-charging energy-storage devices that could compete with batteries now on the market, officials said.
"It would be truly amazing," said John Kassakian, a professor and director of MIT's Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems.

Kassakian, working with fellow Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Joel Schindall and doctoral candidate Riccardo Signorelli, said the team needs about six months to a year of further research to demonstrate the device's commercial viability.

If the team then gets commercial backing, the devices could be on the market within five years.

The technology is built on improvements to ultra-capacitors, currently used in hybrid cars.

But the problem with existing ultracapacitors, which store energy as an electrical field and don't require chemical reactions for power, is that they have to be bigger than normal batteries in order to hold the same charge.

MIT researchers, using nanotechnology, have reduced the size of the devices by using carbon nanotubes to help store electrical fields at the atomic level.

The bottom line: smaller ultracapacitors that could fit into cell phones, flashlights, radios and anything else. The devices could even be used in larger products, from trucks to missile-guidance systems.

Judy Higgins, a purchaser for Battery Experts, an indiana outlet that sells nothing but batteries, said ultracapacitors's abiliity to be recharged in a minute - rather than an hour or more like conventional batteries - would be a big plus for customers.

But she questioned whether their long-lasting durability - up to 10 years - would be that big of a plus. "People are charging their cell phones so often," she said.
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Read also:
Researchers fired up over new battery:
 a MIT TechTalk news by Deborah Halber, News Offices Correspondent.