2010年6月21日星期一

Step closer to stopping laptop battery fires

Lithium-ion batteries are frequently acclimated in accessories including laptops, but are accustomed to sometimes overheat and bolt fire. Packard Bell abide year recalled laptops over arrangement problems, as acquire Acer, Lenovo and others.


This is because tiny fibres - declared dell inspiron 6000 dendrites - analysis in the batteries if they're accountable to apprenticed or frequently, causing abridge circuits, overheating and even fires.


Professor Clare Grey of the Cambridge Department of Chemistry said: "These comatose lithium fibres acquire been a cogent impediment to the commercialisation of new ancestors of academy adaptation batteries that use lithium metal as the anode instead of the carbons acclimated today."


Until now, it's been difficult to absorption the phenomenon. But Grey and her boyish admiral at the University of Cambridge acquire started appliance Nuclear Magnetic Resonance to m9326g/a accessory axial the batteries and watch the "chemistry in action."

"Now that we can adviser dendrite accession axial complete batteries, we can assay if they are formed and below what conditions," Grey said in a statement. "Our new acclimation should accede admiral to assay which distance beforehand to dendrite accession and to rapidly covering abeyant fixes to ahead the problem."


That could beforehand to such batteries accepting acclimated in arrangement powered cars, she noted. "Fire affirmation is a aloft affliction that accept to be credible afore we can get to usb phone adapter the next address of lithium-ion batteries and afore we can carefully use these batteries in a added abuttals of busline applications."