FREDERICTON — If Adam Dyker’s research is successful, someday the batteries in your cellphone, laptop computer or even your car will be made of materials that are abundant, renewable and much less toxic.
The assistant chemistry professor at the University of New Brunswick has just received almost $400,000 in research funding to create a new laboratory to develop cutting-edge organic batteries.
“The goal is to make batteries that have the active components — the parts that are actually doing the chemistry — be organic molecules rather than metal-based compounds,” Dyker said in a recent interview.
“It’s a fairly new area. ... The advantages of these are they are safer.
“A lot of other batteries have toxic metals.”
Organic doesn’t mean fruits and vegetables, but rather carbon and nitrogen compounds associated with organic chemistry.
“The resources are there,” Dyker said. “We don’t have to mine these compounds.”
The most successful battery in use today in common household electronics is the lithium-ion battery, but Dyker said there are problems with them. Lithium isn’t that toxic but it does have a tendency to get hot and burst into flames if overcharged.
Nickel-cadmium batteries used in power tools are toxic, and environmental restrictions on cadmium are starting to grow, he said.
Scientists only began working on organic batteries in the early 2000s, and Dyker said he’s excited to be part of such research.
Dyker, 30, said he likes the fact that everyone can relate to batteries.
“No one goes through a day without using something battery powered. It is very motivating to be working on something that could benefit society in that way.”
So far, research in the field shows organic batteries have fast charging and discharging times — much faster than lithium-ion batteries. That makes organic batteries potentially good for high-power applications such as power tools, hybrid electric vehicles and even backup power storage.
Dyker said in the lab he can charge and discharge an organic battery 1,000 times in two days compared to an hour to charge and discharge a lithium-ion battery. That lets him build several different batteries from different organic compounds and test them rapidly.
Dyker said it’ll be a while yet before organic batteries will be available in stores.
“We’ve got a long way to go before we get there in terms of just developing the chemistry,” he said.