Lithium-ion batteries are being used in an increasing number of portable gadgets. They are simply the best battery tech we have available today, but they aren’t 100% safe. We’ve all seen what can happen when one of these batteries gets damaged and overheats. Typically there will be a very hot ball of flames that consumes whatever device the battery was inside.
Until we have a replacement for lithium-ion, we need a way to mitigate that risk, and Stanford University looks to have come up with the solution: a lithium-ion battery that can’t overheat. And it’s all thanks to a human body temperature wearable sensor, which has been tweaked for use in batteries.
The tweaked sensor takes the form of a plastic polymer containing nickel particles that’s connected to the battery electrodes. Under normal circumstances electricity is allowed to flow through the nickel particles as they are touching each other. However, if the battery heats up, the polymer expands and at a set temperature the nickel particles separate and break their link. Electricity stops flowing and the battery can’t get any hotter.
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