A new battery could store ten times the power of lithium-ion

Batteries not included

Batteries are great. They make many helmets from the future, from smartphones to electric cars. The problem, of course, is that the batteries never seem to have enough time for a long time – and their environmental impact is considerable.

Now, though, an All-Star Team of Research from Caltech, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Honda say they have developed a fluoride-based battery that can provide ten times the energy density of a conventional lithium-ion cell – and take fewer resources to produce.

Fluoride with me

The team describes the new battery in a paper published Friday in the magazine Science. Basically, CNET Reports, fluoride batteries are around for a while – but they require oven-like temperatures of around 300 degrees in advance (150 Celsius) to function. The new battery, according to Caltech and the company, can produce power at room temperature.

"Fluoride-Ion batteries offer a promising new battery chemistry with up to ten times more energy density than currently available lithium batteries," said Christopher Brokes, a Honda Research Institute researcher and a co-author of the paper, in a press release. "Not like Li-ion batteries, the fibers do not provide a safety risk due to overheating, and obtaining the source of material for fibers significantly less environmental impact than the extraction process for lithium and cobalt."