Can Dotz Nano reduce your battery recharge time to 10 minutes?

Dotz Nano shares jumped 17 per cent in early trade after the Israeli tech play announced a research project to improve battery life and reduce charge times.

The Israeli company has partnered with Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU) on a program to embed its graphene quantum dots onto the cathode — the negatively charged electrode — in lithium ion batteries.

Increasing adoption of smartphones, digital cameras and electric cars is driving demand for lithium ion batteries. The global market could reach $US56 billion by 2024, according to researcher Variant Market Research.

Dotz Nano (ASX:DTZ) specialises in making tiny, non-toxic, quantum dots designed to track products.

But it believes the dots could also improve battery life-cycle by three times and reduce recharging times to around 10 minutes.

Dotz Nano’s Moti Gross says they also want to improve battery energy strength.

“Specifically by using our quantum dots with VO2 [vanadium oxide] they give it the necessary performance boost that previous research didn’t show,” he told Stockhead.

Now that the proof of concept is done, Mr Gross is expecting to have a prototype tested and built within 12 months.

The news, which includes the fact that Dotz Nano has an option over the exclusive commercialisation rights of any proven research, sent its share price up 2c to 13.5c in lunchtime trade.

Dotz Nano joins a legion of businesses hoping their battery research will be the next big thing.

As with any battery research, the idea is very exciting. But new lithium battery research has been a graveyard for companies which thought they had the next big thing.

Much is still not understood about how different materials used in lithium ion batteries react and behave over time.

Not many metal compounds actually perform well in a lithium battery, without exploding into flames.

Vanadium oxide (VO2), the cathode material that’s the subject of the Singaporean research done by NTU’s associate professor Hongjin Fan, has not yet been proved to work.

The preliminary research said that while VO2 has high energy capacity, it’s not stable and has so far not performed well when added to a battery.

Prof Fan thinks that by adding the compound to graphite in a new way, using Dotz Nano’s quantum dots as a coating over the cathode, they can unleash the power potential in VO2.