The days of spontaneous laptop combustion
could be behind us if a new technology for water-based batteries takes off.
As reported over on Ars Technica
, scientists have developed a lithium-ion battery which includes added water - forming what's known as a "aqueous lithium ion battery
" - without harming the performance.
Although the technology has been around for a while, manufacturers have shied away from aqueous lithium ion systems owing to their extremely short lifespan: while significantly less toxic and infinitely less flammable than the electrolytes used in traditional batteries, the aqueous variants would often drop to 50 percent capacity after a mere 100 charges.
However, the research team - which has published its findings in Nature Chemistry
- wasn't so quick to discount the technology, and has developed a method of creating aqueous lithium ion batteries capable of holding 90 percent of their design charge after a thousand cycles - a figure far more in keeping with their use in portable devices such as smartphones and laptops.
Sadly, the groups work is still very much in the prototype stage: although the lifespan
of the battery they created was up to scratch, the overall capacity
was sub-par - offering just ten minutes of juice before petering out.
However, with consumers waking up to just how eco-unfriendly the chemicals in your average battery really are, the team's work could end up in a battery near you in the next few years - providing, that is, that they are able to successfully scale the technology to the capacities required for active use.