Super-fast electric car charging is here with Mida’s touch

Despite the growing popularity of electric vehicles, many consumers still hesitate as it may take longer to power up an electric car than it does to gas up a conventional one.

Another concern is that frequent charging or speeding up the charging process can damage the battery and reduce its lifespan. Now, scientists have developed a superfast charging methods tailored to power different types of electric vehicle batteries in 10 minutes or less without harm.

The researchers will present their results Monday at the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) Fall 2022, a hybrid meeting being held virtually and in-person on Aug. 21-25, with nearly 11,000 presentations on a wide range of science topics.

“Fast charging is the key to increasing consumer confidence and overall adoption of electric vehicles,” says Eric Dufek, who is presenting this work at the meeting. “It would allow vehicle charging to be very similar to filling up at a gas station.” Such an advance could help the US reach President Biden’s goal that by 2030, half of all vehicles sold should be electric or hybrid.

When a lithium-ion battery is being charged, lithium ions migrate from one side of the device, the cathode, to the other, the anode. By making the lithium ions migrate faster, the battery is charged more quickly, but sometimes the lithium ions don’t fully move into the anode. In this situation, lithium metal can build up, and this can trigger early battery failure and reducing the lifetime of the battery.

To address these challenges, Dufek and his research team at Idaho National Laboratory used machine learning to create unique charging protocols. By inputting information about the condition of many lithium-ion batteries during their charging and discharging cycles, the scientists trained the machine learning analysis to predict lifetimes. The team then analyzed to identify and optimize new protocols.

“We’ve significantly increased the amount of energy that can go into a battery cell in a short amount of time,” says Dufek. “Currently, we’re seeing batteries charge to over 90% in 10 minutes without lithium plating or cathode cracking.”

Going from a nearly dead battery to one at 90% power in only 10 minutes is a far cry from current methods, which, at best, can get an electric vehicle to full charge in about half an hour. While many researchers are looking for methods to achieve this sort of super-fast charging, Dufek says that one advantage of their machine learning model is that it ties the protocols to the physics of what is actually happening in a battery.

The researchers plan to use their model to develop and design new lithium-ion batteries that are optimized to undergo fast charging.