TIME FOR A NEW COATING

COULD YOUR MUST-CARRY gadgets – cell phones, tabs, laptops, MP3 players, games consoles or power banks – set fire to an aircraft? Yes, if they are powered by lithium-ion batteries. It all started with the ill-fated Galaxy Note 7, and exploding batteries have made it to the headlines with alarming frequencies ever since. The risk is considered so high that frequent fliers are compelled to fly without certain MacBook Pro models.

The tech world has been working on a better battery technology so that we have safer, longer-lasting and more lightweight products. Now, researchers at Stanford University have come up with a solution that may bring the lithium metal batteries out of the labs. These are different from their lithium-ion brethren, but they also have a short life and a tendency to explode. However, Stanford and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory team have developed a coating that helps extend battery life and makes it safer, according to a report published in Stanford News.

A lithium metal battery has tiny dendrites (named so due to their needle-thin forms) in the separator between positive and negative sides which could cause a short circuit. Were it not for this danger, these batteries would have had a future in electric vehicles. But compared to lithium-ion, lithium metal batteries are lighter and carry more charge because they do not use graphite. Given more reliability, they could also be used in phones and other gadgets. Lithium-ion batteries have an annual market worth $30 billion, but they are at the end of the innovation cycle, and a new product is expected to plug all loopholes.