No more laptop fires: Researchers build a better battery

Jamil Soni Neto

Google "lithium-ion battery explosion" and you'll find enough YouTube videos and even more still shots of charred electronics to feel a tinge of fear about the batteries lurking inside your laptop.

Maybe that's just me. But lithium-ion batteries—which make our lightweight, high-powered electronics possible—do carry a small but real flammability risk from one of their key chemical ingredients. A team of scientists has now tested an alternative battery ingredient that would make battery fires a thing of the past.

For small and well-maintained batteries, the risks of a battery explosion are relatively low, but potential applications for large-scale batteries to provide backup power to airplanes or electrical grid scale storage are seriously limited by the inherent flammability.