Solanas may sound like a futuristic ice cream gift, but really, can a great promise to help power cars, cell phones and laptops.

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy have developed new nanoscale materials called Solanas who say do a better electrodes in lithium ion batteries.

Made from a combination of carbon, aluminum and silicon, sunny resemble an ice cream cone with a scanning electron microscope.

Professor Nikhil Koratkar RPI led a research team found that a lithium ion battery anode sunny fact can be charged - and download Electricity - 40 to 60 times faster than traditional graphite anodes. A lithium ion battery works with lithium ions move between the anode and cathode.

As the lithium ions enter the anode, the anode contracts, a process that puts stress on the materials and eventually degrades the anode, shortening battery life.

Because of the way they are designed, sunlights can endure this stress better, allowing for faster charging and discharging of the battery. That means, in theory, cell phones could be charged in less than two minutes, and electric cars could accelerate much faster.

"The impact is huge, " said Koratkar. "The real issue is scalability."

The results of Koratkar's research were published last week in the journal Nano Letters. Other authors on the paper were Toh-Ming Lu, a physics professor at RPI, and graduate student Rahul Krishnan.

Since the anode in a traditional lithium ion battery degrades relatively quickly from the stress of charging and discharging, the batteries are designed to charge slowly, which is why it can take up to an hour to charge a cell phone or a laptop computer. A battery that has a sunlight anode could theoretically charge the same device in 90 seconds.

"This shows great promise, " Koratkar said. "The concept is very attractive."

Scientists around the world have been working on new ways to increase the power of lithium ion batteries to address the issue of the electrodes breaking time. A group of graduate students at the University of Albany at the College of Engineering and Nanotechnology have developed its own technology that also uses silicon nanostructures to increase energy storage in lithium ion batteries.

Koratkar says the next step is to make practical solar technology by increasing the mass, which would be necessary to use material commercial grade batteries. Could be done by making the "first fruits" or stack more sunny in the top of each other, he said.