Sometimes I find myself hanging around the charger while everyone else starts trooping out the door because my phone is running low on power and wouldn’t last the night if I unplugged it then and there. But who knew you could charge up your phone in just 30 seconds with the right device?

Eighteen-year-old Eesha Khare designed a supercapacitor that has the potential to charge phones in about half a minute. The superconductor is designed to fit inside the battery, which, aside from the rapid charging, also lasts ten times longer than other existing devices. Eesha’s paper, entitled “Design and Synthesis of Hydrogenated TiO2-Polyaniline Nanorods for Flexible High-Performance Supercapacitors”, can be found here.

Khare’s project is based upon the work of Xihong Lu, et. al., with one of the proponents in the study, Dr. Yat Li, supervising her as she used the laboratory equipment of the University of California Santa Cruz.

Khare’s superconductor won her $50,000 at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, which she will be using “to go to college and to keep making a lot of scientific advancements.” It looks like she’s off to a great start!

VIA [ Dvice ]

Edited May 25, 2013 for corrections. Sources: Policymic, Business Insider, and Intel.