Teenager invents device which charges a cellphone within 20 seconds

A California teen has attracted the attention of tech giants Google for her potentially revolutionary invention which charges a phone in 20 seconds flat.

The super-fast charging device has been dubbed a supercapacitor by 18-year-old Esha Khare, of Saratoga - as she took home $50, 000 from the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, which took place in Phoenix this week.

The device will make waiting hours for a phone to charge a thing of the past and the gizmo packs more energy into a smaller space than traditional phone batteries and holds the charge for longer.

So far, Khare has only used her supercapacitor to power a light-emitting diode or LED - but she sees a bright future that one day will see her invention powering cellphones, cars and any gadget that requires a rechargeable battery.

Heading to Harvard, Khare told CBS San Francisco that this is only the start and that she will 'be setting the world on fire' from here.

'My cellphone battery always dies, ' she told NBC News when asked what inspired her to work on the energy-storage technology.

Specializing in nanochemistry allowed Khare to reduce the size of her invention. 'Really working at the nanoscale to make significant advances in many different fields.'

The supercapacitor is flexible and tiny, and is able to handle 10, 000 recharge cycles, more than normal batteries by a factor of 10.

How an 18-year-old girl has managed to figure out something that multi-national corporations have not has led to her being flooded with offers for her amazing leap forward.

Google have been in contact with Khare to explore how she plans to change the makeup of cell phone battery life.