Dream big! – Now your laptop batteries can last 10 times longer!

Ever wondered life without Lithium-ion batteries? Without which we all would be hanging around power outlets. Lithium-ion batteries (Li-on), the incredibly popular battery used in laptops, mobile phones and PDA devices.

Combination of Li-on batteries and better efficient processors can make your laptop to run all day in a single charge. Li-on batteries are coming up with two new improvements that can boost your laptop battery life. Incredibly these improvements have bring not only long life battery, but more cooler and safer.

Before you knock my head, let me come to the latest improvements in the Li-on batteries. A new polymer jelly can make batteries smaller, cheaper and safer, and new silicon anodes held together by seaweed extract could boost them to hold up to ten times more charge.

Till now Li-on batteries were powered with liquid electrolyte, which will be replaced by “Polymer jelly”. The liquid electrolyte had disadvantages such as over heating, which can lead to thermal runaway (state which can catch fire).  Thermal runaway was major problem in most of the batteries. Back to history in 2006, Dell recalled its 4 million batteries, 55000 batteries recalled by HP and 1.2 million batteries recalled by Apple, all were due to thermal away problems. Introduction of polymer jelly in batteries could shadow the problems of thermal runway, says the research experts from University of Leeds.

“The polymer gel resembles a solid film, but contains about 70%  of liquid electrolyte. It is made using the same principles as making a jelly: by adding lots of hot water to ‘gelatine’ – which leads to the mixture of polymer and electrolyte – and solid but flexible mass when it cools.”

The second improved is under the research by the Georgia Institute of Technology and Clemson University, were researchers found a way of using anodes in Li-on batteries which can hold up your battery charge for almost ten times more. Anodes are usually a mixture of graphite powder with a polymer binder which sticks it to a metal foil.

Lets hope these new improvements in the Li-on batteries can make batteries life longer.