Heard of incidents where batteries catch fire and cause serious and sometimes catastrophic damages? There was an Airbus A321 that was gutted by flames in South Korea when a power bank stored in an overhead compartment caught fire. There are also many stories of ordinary cell phones and e-scooter battery fires. Often people sleep right next to their cell phones when being charged. I generally try to charge things only when I’m awake and nearby so that I can quickly react to a smell or sight of smoke or fire. So I try not to charge anything while I’m sleeping.

I was happy to hear of this new technology improvement in Lithium batteries. If this is successful, it may still be years before this available everywhere.

Now, a team of researchers from The Chinese University of Hong Kong has proposed a change in lithium-ion battery design that could rapidly integrate into current manufacturing methods, because it simply involves swapping chemicals in the existing electrolyte solution.The method was detailed earlier this year in a study led by Yue Sun, now a postdoctoral fellow at Virginia Tech: “I think the most difficult thing for people to realize about batteries is that when you try to optimize performance, sometimes you compromise safety,” she said, explaining that increasing performance requires a focus on chemical reactions that happen at room temperature, while increasing safety focuses on reactions that happen at high temperatures. “So we came up with an idea to break this trade off by designing a temperature-sensitive material, which can provide a good performance at room temperature, but can also offer good stability at high temperatures.”