MIT scientists may have found a solution to a problem that has been bugging us for quite some time now: battery recharging. We all hate doing it, since it take hours to do so, and we often don’t have the time for it, or remember to do it in the last minute.

But, where there’s a will there’s a way! The MIT engineers have been working on developing a material that allows the easy flow of electric energy, reducing the amount of recharging time from hours to seconds.

Until a few years ago, the common belief was that the lithium ions in batteries, which carry the charge across the battery, are moving very slow through the material. But more recent studies have shown that if fact, they could be moving faster, if they were given the opportunity.

It has been show that lithium ions move into the material through tunnels connected to the surface of the material. What’s causing them to be slow is the fact that sometimes, they are not capable of reaching these tunnel entrances.

But scientists have now created a new surface structure that allows the lithium ions to move around the outside of the material in a beltway-like pattern, and be directly diverted into a tunnel as soon as it reaches it. This causes a dramatic reduction in the time spent recharging, they said.

They’ve also managed to create a small battery that can be fully charged or discharged in less than 20 seconds, which is also made up of a material that is not so easy degradable. The findings appear in Nature.