With the use of smartphones being prominent among the young generation, the excitement of taking selfies, whatsApping, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook is beyond estimation, then when all the battery is drained, the frustration of waiting hours for your phone to charge hits you hard.

But this could soon be a thing of the past thanks to an aluminium battery that recharges in less than 60 seconds.

And the technology is both greener and safer than current batteries, as well as being flexible.

It is the first high-performance aluminium battery that is ‘fast-charging, long-lasting and inexpensive’, according to its designers.

Lead author and professor of chemistry at the university, Hongjie Dai, said: ‘We have developed a rechargeable aluminium battery that may replace existing storage devices, such as alkaline batteries, which are bad for the environment, and lithium-ion batteries, which occasionally burst into flames.

‘Our new battery won’t catch fire, even if you drill through it.’

Aluminium is cheap and has a low flammability coupled with a high-charge storage capacity.

But scientists have struggled to make a commercially viable aluminium-ion battery because of the difficulty in finding materials capable of producing sufficient voltage after repeated cycles of charging and discharging.

The aluminum-ion battery consists of two electrodes – a negatively charged anode made of aluminum and a positively charged graphite cathode along with an ionic liquid electrolyte.

These sit inside a flexible polymer-coated pouch.

Stanford graduate student Ming Gong added: ‘The electrolyte is basically a salt that’s liquid at room temperature, so it’s very safe.

‘Lithium-ion batteries can be a fire hazard.

‘In this study, we have videos showing that you can drill through the aluminium battery pouch, and it will continue working for a while longer without catching fire.

‘But lithium batteries can go off in an unpredictable manner in the air, the car or in your pocket. Besides safety, we have achieved major breakthroughs in aluminium battery performance.’

And while lithium-ion battery can take hours to charge, the new battery has ‘unprecedented charging times’ of down to one minute.

Unlike other prototypes which die after just 100 charges, the Stanford battery can also withstand more than 7,500 cycles without any loss of capacity.

By comparison, a typical lithium-ion battery lasts about 1,000 cycles.

Mr Gong continued: ‘Another feature of the aluminum battery is flexibility.

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