Batteries Smaller Than a Grain of Salt

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."

Comments

Re:You know....

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

As exciting as this is, I would take this news... ... with a grain of salt.

Ugh. If you ever said that to me in person I'd likely be charged with a salt and battery.

Re:Maybe they should get the big ones right first

[natehoy]

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?