Strictly speaking the composite behaves not like a battery but more like a capacitor, or rather a supercapacitor, says Dr Greenhalgh.

ECONOMIST: Carbon-composite batteries

Khare's device, a black, rectangular type of supercapacitor just over an inch long, can charge a cell phone battery in 20 to 30 seconds, she said.

CNN: Recharge your cellphone in 20 seconds

"I developed a new supercapacitor, which is basically an energy storage device which can hold a lot of energy in a small amount of volume, " she told KPIX 5.

CNN: Recharge your cellphone in 30 seconds

Last month, the most exciting news was from UCLA, where a small team of researchers developed a micro-scale graphene-based supercapacitor that can charge and discharge a hundred to a thousand times faster than current batteries.

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