A new type of liquid battery which could allow electric cars to be charged in seconds has been developed at the University of Glasgow.

Chemists at the university created a battery system which uses nano-molecules to store both electric power and hydrogen gas.

The "hybrid-electric-hydrogen" flow battery can release either electricity or hydrogen as fuel.

When it is turned into a concentrated liquid, the amount of energy it can store increases tenfold.

As a pumpable liquid, it could allow electric cars to be charged in seconds rather than hours.

The researchers say that cars which use these batteries could be filled up in the same amount of time as a petrol car.

The old battery liquid would be extracted at the same time and recharged at the station.

Professor Leroy Cronin, Dr Mark Symes, and Dr Jia Jia Chen developed the battery.

They say that as well as being a new storage system for electric cars, it could store renewable energy and develop electric-to-gas fuel systems.

Prof Cronin said: "For future renewables to be effective high capacity and flexible energy storage systems are needed to smooth out the peaks and troughs in supply.

"Our approach will provide a new route to do this electrochemically and could even have application in electric cars where batteries can still take hours to recharge and have limited capacity.

"Moreover, the very high energy density of our material could increase the range of electric cars, and also increase the resilience of energy storage systems to keep the lights on at times of peak demand."

The research, funded by the University of Glasgow and the European Research Council, is published in the journal Nature Chemistry.