StoreDot’s Bio-Organic Battery Tech Can Charge From Flat to Full in 30 Seconds?

In the past ten years there have been tens of articles predicting a new breakthrough technology, but not once I've seen any kind of follow up, like: "Remember that awesome new battery technology we covered last year? They're closer to making it reality". This never happens, I get it that progress takes decades, but why these kind of projects seem to simply die out?

It's a very long road from making something work on a PhD students desk to a industrial process that works at scale. Many things can go wrong. But since everybody competes for funding things are reported as if they were available on the shelf tomorrow.

The fact that this battery is bio-organic is a good sign, as typically the reason batteries haven't advanced at the exponential rate of other technologies is that they are based on chemical reactions.

I am doing research on quantum dot technology[0], but most of the information seems to be about the usage in LCD screens and solar panels, does anyone have any good resources or information on their use in batteries?

[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_dot

That interview screams "snake oil" at me so hard it is hard to read.

"It’s not a full capacity battery yet either." - So how much capacity is it? Pretty much everyone who has one of those USB charging IR helicopters from Think Geek have seen a battery that 'charges in 30 seconds' but how long would it run the phone?

"The diameter of these sphere is 2.1 nanometer. Very, very tiny. And these can be used, because they have special properties and they are robust, in a semi-conductor device or in a battery or in a display. We are talking about new type of materials that can be introduced into different types of devices.” -- Even though I'm trying hard not to reflexively reject anything based on "crystals" (California New Age mysticism) the statement has issues. 2.1 nanometer sphere? What element? (not carbon (1.1 nanometer for C60)).

"StoreDot’s original focus ... was memory chips ... shifted ... to ... fast-charging smartphone batteries, and cadmium-free displays — with its nano-crystal tech offering a cheaper and non-toxic alternative to cadmium in screens." -- Sounds like an experiment result in search of a product, but nowhere do they point to the original paper or research which kicked off this adventure?

"The big challenge for StoreDot is getting an industry that’s used to building electronics one way to switch to something new and different," -- this statement is always untrue for a 'better' thing. If you can do the same thing 10x better as the existing tech, the manufacturing comes to you, you don't have to do anything to 'get the industry' to change. They are motivated to build the products that are going to sell the most, period.

"”This is a new type of material, with new physics, new chemistry, that is actually coming from nature…" -- not only new physics but also new chemistry? Double Nobel Prize time here folks. That kind of statement makes me look for the evidence to back up that claim. Not provided in the article and again no referenced research.

This is one of those cases where if they had just enough money to build a single product, a full capacity battery that charged in 30 seconds. And they produced one, maybe two lots of a few thousand. Then they wake up people who are really really interested in that. But unless they come through with more information on the new physics and chemistry that makes that possible, I will remain skeptical.

If the internal resistance of the battery really is low enough for this to work then the discharge speed could also be a huge advantage for other applications.

At the same time I see a huge safety issue: If I drop my phone in the water I don't want it to be able to transmit power that quickly.