Rolls-Royce Is Investing in Polymers to Produce Supercharged Batteries

Rolls-Royce has teamed up with a startup in the UK to work on highly advanced batteries. The company will work with Superdielectrics to work on development of batteries using the same material that the startup had initially developed for contact lenses. Rolls-Royce will be contributing its automotive engineering experience to the project while Superdielectric specializes in materials science and is producing new hydrophilic polymers.

The team of scientists at Superdielectrics includes researchers from the University of Bristol and the University of Surrey. Comemnting on the partnership, Dr. Dave Smith, Director of Central Technology at Rolls-Royce said that he believes electrification will play an iincreasingly prominent role in the automotive sector in the coming years and Rolls-Royce is trying to take advantage of new developments in the field by partnering with companies working on potential new technologies for energy storage.

The materials that Superdielectric has developed are similar to those used for contact lenses. These polymers can also be used to increase electricity storage in capacitors. The battery that Superdielectric created has the capability to store more electricity by creating electrostatic fields. Tests indicated that this capacitor can be between 1000 to 10,000 times more efficient than ones that are currently available in the market. Taking advantage of this innovation can make it possible for electric vehicles to charge much faster.

Rolls-Royce executive Warren East told, “Electrification is an inescapable trend in industrial markets today. And that includes in aerospace, in due course, but it’s actually present today in many of the markets that we serve through our power systems business.”