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Physicists at the University of Miami and Tokyo and Tohoku have invented a radical new type of battery in the laboratory. The profound findings were published in the journal Nature.

The battery uses special nanomagnets inside devices called magnetic tunnel junctions. By applying a large magnetic force across a series of of these devices, profound amounts of energy can be stored within them. Energy is stored as these devices are wound up analogous to a toy soldier and hence are given the term spin battery. The material is solid state and no chemistry is required.

Stored magnetic energy is then converted to electricity when a load is placed on the system.

Lead inventor Stuart Barnes said "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."

The energy density of batteries created from these devices has the potential to be fantastically enormous.

Barnes noted that although the actual device has a diameter of a human hair, the energy that could be stored in it could potentially run a car for miles.

Source (Nature)