(PhysOrg.com) -- Imagine dropping your phone on the hard
concrete sidewalk—but when you pick it up, you find its battery has
already healed itself.
A team of researchers from the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE)
Argonne National Laboratory are exploring ways to design batteries that
heal themselves when damaged.
"This would help electronics survive daily use—both the long-term
damage caused by charging over and over again, and also the inevitable
physical damage of everyday life," said Jeff Moore, a UIUC scientist on
the team.
Scientists think that loss of electrical conductivity is what causes a
battery to fade and die. Theories abound on the specific molecular
failures; perhaps chemicals build up on electrodes, or the electrodes
themselves pull away. Perhaps it's simply the inevitable stress
fractures in materials forced to expand and contract repeatedly as the
battery is charged and used.
In any case, the battery's storage capacity drops due to loss of
electrical conductivity. This is what the team wants to address...
Full article: http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-battery-thyself-self-repairing-batteries.html