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18-Year-Old Invents 30-Second Phone Charger

Science student Eesha Khare of Saratoga, Calif. won Intel's Young Scientist Award by building a supercharger that slides into your mobile phone's battery, recharging it in seconds.

18-year-old Indian-American science student Eesha Khare of Saratoga, Calif. proposed solving the problem using a supercharger that slides into your mobile phone’s battery, allowing it to charge in just 20 to 30 seconds. In fact Khare did more than just propose it, she actually built a tiny super-capacitor and demonstrated its ability to power an LED device. Here’s her description of the project in a California State Science Fair outline:

With the rapid growth of portable electronics, it has become necessary to develop efficient energy-storage technology to match this development. While batteries are currently used for energy-storage, they suffer from long charging times and short cycle life. Electrochemical supercapacitors have attracted attention as energy-storage devices because they bridge the gap between current alternatives of conventional capacitors and batteries, offering higher energy density than conventional capacitors and higher power density than batteries. Despite these advantages, supercapacitor energy density is much lower than batteries and increasing energy density remains a key challenge in supercapacitor research. The goal of this work was to design and synthesize a supercapacitor with increased energy density while maintaining power density and long cycle life.

Mission accomplished: In addition to accolades for actually designing the device, the project secured Khare one of two runner-up spots in Intel’s International Science and Engineering Fair, where she beat out over 1,600 finalists from more than 70 countries, netting her a cool $50,000 in prize money.