New “Spin Battery” Storing Energy into Nano-Magnets

magnetic battery 234x300 New Spin Battery Storing Energy into Nano MagnetsUntil recently, the only affordable and feasible energy storage known to man has been chemical. Our current batteries, whether they power our gadgets or our homes, transform the electrical energy into chemical reactions and vice-versa.

US Researchers from the University of Miami and Japanese researchers from the Universities of Tokyo and Tohoku invented a new type of battery that could revolutionize the way we think of a battery in all the aspects, from their charging speed to their capacity and discharging power.



Their product is called “spin battery”, and, although for the moment it has the width of a human hair, and cannot even light a LED, offers tremendous possibilities. The spin battery is charged by applying a powerful magnetic field to nano-magnets contained in a device called “magnetic tunnel junction”, or MTJ. The technology could be used successfully in making new data storage devices, such as hard drives with no moving parts.

“We had anticipated the effect, but the device produced a voltage over a hundred times too big and for tens of minutes, rather than for milliseconds as we had expected. That this was counterintuitive is what lead to our theoretical understanding of what was really going on.”, University of Miami Physicist Stewart E. Barnes said.

So, ladies and gentlemen, the new magnetic battery can store more power, charge amazingly fast, and deliver much more than the classic chemical ones. And it’s even more environmentally-friendly than the chemicals! Now, I’d be curious what will be the time until the magnetic battery technology will reach our electric cars, charging them in an instant, while we drive home and pass by a charging point. Am I dreaming? Maybe not for long.



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By Ovidiu
on March 12th, 2009
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electric car battery, fast charging battery, magnetic battery, magnetic energy storage, magnetic power storage, magnetic spin battery, magnetic tunnel junction, nano magnets, spin battery

  1. #1 by justwatching on March 13, 2009 - 4:58 am

    More talk and no product.

  2. #2 by Svend Villsen on April 26, 2009 - 10:49 am

    So can this be scaled up, or are we talking about having many many hair width devices to store the power in? If it can be scaled up, does say the GaAs spacer still need to be 1nm? or could that be proportionaly scaled up too?

    Bring it on :-)
    Svend

  3. #3 by Val Demar on May 3, 2009 - 11:36 pm

    This is the same technology that IBM use for their new memory technology.. Seems that magnetic power is the makes the day..

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