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Batteries Smaller Than a Grain of Salt

Posted by samzenpus on from the packs-a-punch dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Lithium-ion batteries have become ubiquitous in today's consumer electronics — powering our laptops, phones, and iPods. Research funded by DARPA is pushing the limits of this technology and trying to create some of the tiniest batteries on Earth, the largest of which would be no bigger than a grain of sand. These tiny energy storage devices could one day be used to power the electronics and mechanical components of tiny micro- to nano-scale devices."

4 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. Maybe they should get the big ones right first by iONiUM · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't know about everyone else, but I've had no less than 4 devices in the last year have faulty Li-Ion batteries (they didn't hold a charge, or ran out much faster than they should have). Each time I had to exchange the device for a new one, at which point it worked as expected.

    Is this really how batteries are now? It's pathetic.

    1. Re:Maybe they should get the big ones right first by natehoy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      A couple of months ago, my ThinkPad reported my battery as "unusable" after a year of service. Odd thing was, the battery didn't slowly lose service life. I was getting 3 hours at first, and it was down to about 2 hours 30 minutes, then one day I plugged it in to recharge and the ThinkPad flat out refused to charge the battery. It was under warranty, so Lenovo issued my company a new one free of charge and even overnighted it, but...

      I'm wondering if this is a sign that manufacturers are finally taking the scary explosive dangerousness that is highly unstable Li-Ion seriously, and programming their chargers to be overcautious about any and all perceived faults in the battery?

      --
      "This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
  2. Re:Sand or salt? by The_mad_linguist · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Except people in the US, since nobody can remember the conversion factor between Metric Buttloads (mB) and Imperial Fucktons.

  3. Power density by ermintru · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So we current have current laptop batteries that store X power in Y space and when then go wrong they over heat or even burst into flames so the new batteries that store the X power in "grain of rice" space then the power density stored must be a minimum of a 1000 times higher what happens when one of those goes wrong?