New Battery Tech Warns When An Explosion Is Possible

Though they're rare, we've all heard the horror stories: people innocently using their smartphones and tablets, only to have them catch fire and/or explode, sometimes causing severe injuries to the users. The reasons this happens are numerous, but in the case of lithium-ion batteries, they can usually be narrowed down to a specific cause: internal short-circuiting. Thanks to a team of researchers from Stanford, that issue could be partially solved via a new technology that alerts when something has gone awry.

Lithium-ion batteries are constructed with a cathode and an anode, which are separated from each other. If that separation is breached, such as from poor construction or physical damage, the two electrodes may touch and result in the explosive results some unfortunate souls have experienced firsthand.

This problem isn't reserved for gadget batteries, and can happen in the larger batteries used in solar farms, for example. Though an actual solution to that potential hazard is still far off, a way to alert users of an internal problem has been developed by four Stanford researchers.

According to details published in Nature Communications, this technology involves a layer of copper positioned between the two aforementioned electrodes that will cause the battery's voltage to drop if a leak happens. This sudden drop in voltage will alert the user that something is wrong and the battery needs changed before a fire or explosion happens.

SOURCE: Gizmodo

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