Lithium ion batteries may soon be able to charge much faster thanks to what seems like a simple substitution of one mineral for another in the battery’s cathode. Researchers from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute this month announced they had achieved much faster charging rates in lithium ion batteries by replacing the usual cobalt oxide used together with lithium in the cathode with vanadium disulfide. “It gives you higher energy density, because it’s light. And it gives you faster charging capability, because it’s highly conductive. From those points of view, we were attracted to this material,” said Nikhil Koratkar, the lead author of the study. The researcher added that improving the electrodes was the way to making lithium ion batteries perform even better. It seems lithium ion batteries’ dominance will be hard to break with so much work being put into improving these batteries. Koratkar’s team’s work is only the […]