Batteries

In a quest for safer lithium-ion batteries, a team of engineers at the University of Illinois have come up with a solid polymer-based electrolyte that can not only heal itself but is recyclable without the need for high temperatures or strong acids.

IBM has this week unveiled a new battery that relies on materials from seawater instead of heavy metals, with its early testing suggesting these components mightn't mean a compromise in performance, either.

A new student-led research program has been launched at the UK's University of Southampton with the aim of finding ways to improve the efficiency and extend the battery life of unmanned aviation vehicles used to monitor remote locations.

Many people don't like the limited range of EVs. If their batteries could be recharged quicker, though, that range might not be so off-putting. That's where GBatteries' new tech comes in – it may one day be capable of recharging an EV within minutes.

This year offered a little something for everybody with an interest in battery development, bringing us devices that could charge electric vehicles in 10 minutes and others that suck CO2 out of the air. Here are the biggest breakthroughs of 2019.

When an electric car's lithium-ion battery is damaged or found to be defective, it has to be transported for recycling/disposal in an expensive explosion-proof container. According to a new study, though, such batteries could soon simply be frozen.

The latest promising advance in battery research comes from chemical engineers at Penn State University, who have built a new battery they say can fully charge an electric car in just 10 minutes by operating at extreme temperatures for short bursts.

Some solar panel components are more easily recycled than others, and scientists in Australia may have just figured out how to repurpose one of the trickiest and most valuable: the silicon that serves as its semiconductor.

The 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to three scientists for the invention and development of the lithium-ion battery.

NASA’s Christina Koch and Andrew Morgan have successfully completed a seven-hour spacewalk to the outpost’s vital power systems.

Scientists at the University of California (UC) Berkeley have designed an inflight docking system that adds charge to quadcopters while they're in flight.

An innovative new battery design makes use of an element we’re producing too much of in carbon dioxide, and boasts an unprecedented ability to recharge 500 times.