Explosion-Proof Lithium-Ion Battery Shuts Down At High Temperatures (thestack.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Scientists have designed a lithium-ion battery that self-regulates according to temperature, to prevent itself from overheating. Reaching extreme temperatures, the battery is able to shut itself down, only restarting once it has cooled. The researchers designed the battery to shut down and restart itself over a repeated heating and cooling cycle, without compromising performance. A polyethylene film is applied to one of the electrodes, which expands and shrinks depending on temperature, to create a conductive/non-conductive material.

Comments

Been done

[pcjunky]

If you take apart most Li-Ion battery packs from laptops you will find a thermistor. This is to help prevent the battery from overheating while charging/discharging. Nothing new here except perhaps they are putting them in smaller single cell Li-Ion batteries like cell phone batteries.

Re:Been done

[hey!]

Well, it's hardly news that Li-ion batteries have a variety of safety features built in. When I was an MIT student back in the 70s Li-ion was exotic tech that you took extreme precautions with. Today Li-ion cells have got so many layers of belts and suspenders it's perfectly safe to be carrying a 3500 mAh battery in your pocket -- as I am dong right now.

But as effective safety measures are, that's not quite the same as having an inherently safe cell. An inherently safe cell could well end up being cheaper, for one thing, or easier to scale to large sizes with the same safety margins. Of course most interesting inventions come to nothing, but fundamental improvements in the basic architecture of a common type of cell could potentially alter the economics of electric vehicles, for example.

Re:Been done

[tlhIngan]

If you take apart most Li-Ion battery packs from laptops you will find a thermistor. This is to help prevent the battery from overheating while charging/discharging. Nothing new here except perhaps they are putting them in smaller single cell Li-Ion batteries like cell phone batteries.

LiPos have them as well for the same reason.

But this isn't a thermistor that controls a circuit - it's a new cell construction technique that basically has the cell turn itself off when it gets too hot, not externally via a circuit (that may or may not exist, or may be defeated because the Chinese maker of the pack wanted to save a buck).

Yes, counterfeit battery packs exist, and they often are missing the safety circuits as well as using dodgy cells. While there are often very good 3rd party suppliers of battery packs, there are dozens more dodgy sellers of questionable quality 3rd party packs ready and willing to sell you incendiary devices. Probably the reason why those "hoverboards" we see keep catching on fire.

So having the cell be able to protect itself would provide a big increase in safety if you ever find yourself stuck using some crappy quality 3rd party battery packl

I wonder about dog's teeth.

[SharpFang]

Recently mother, extremely unnerved, called me - claiming her dog brought a dud firework home and it exploded, nearly causing a fire.

Later it was revealed it was not a firework. The dog stole a Li-Ion battery for my phone from my room. Biting into it shorted it, and the battery exploded hard, shooting ribbons of burning lithium all around like a true firework.

So... would this new invention prevent it?