It’s time for cell phone charger manufacturers everywhere to get back to the drawing board; an Indian-origin teen has designed a supercharger which can juice up a handset in 20 short seconds. In recognition of this amazing contribution to technology, Eesha Khare was one of the winners to be awarded the $50,000 Young Scientist Award at the Intel ISEF 2013 Grand Awards Ceremony which was held in Phoenix, Arizona recently.
In technical terms, Khare’s work towards the design and synthesis of hydrogenated TiO2 polyaniline nanorods which can be used to build high-performance supercapacitors is the subject of awe here. The miniscule invention is a device which can be fitted into phone batteries if the technology is taken past the LED it has been used to light up so far. It basically functions as a power storage mechanism which sucks up energy really fast.
The miniature supercapacitor is reported to be able to fit a lot of charge into very little space and hold onto the same for a long period of time. Additionally, the device is touted to be capable of surviving through 10,000 cycles of being energized over and over again. The rechargeable batteries we find in today’s gadgets are said to last through only 1,000 such cycles. So what inspired the 18-year old to create the technology?
Khare told NBC News that it was the fact that her cell phone battery keeps dying. It’s a situation most of us will surely identify with. We mean, who among us hasn’t waited impatiently for some gizmo or the other to juice up while wishing it could draw energy faster? Like we’ve already mentioned above, the supercapacitor has only be employed to power up an LED. But the high school inventor insists that it can find wide applicability in the industry.
The tiny device also boasts of having a flexible structure. Khare envisions its use in clothing, rollup displays and other types of materials which may have need of the same. The bright youngster feels that her work on supercapacitors has given her a nudge in the direction of nanochemistry, a branch which can allow for important progress in many other fields.
Eesha Khare’s 20-second supercharger for cell phones is also believed to show potential applicability in car batteries, according to an official Intel press release.