I realize that just about everyone and their brother is proclaiming how mobile computing, whether through our smartphones, laptops, or tablets is changing our world except there are two problems with that idyllic belief – the carriers and the joke we refer to as battery life.
There’s no need to go into the first choke hold on mobile growth but the second – battery life – is the one that more than anything else will dictate how persuasive mobile computing becomes. While we have been seeing some radical improvements in the length of time you can use a battery between recharges has been improving but that is because smartphone, laptop, and tablet manufacturers have been trying their damnedest to eek out every millisecond from a system that has changed very little in comparison to the rest of the technology that relies on them.
Thankfully we aren’t stuck with the battery companies being the ones researching new battery technology as evidenced by a research team at the University of Leeds that have invented a jelly battery that is not only cheaper than existing battery options but also lighter, safer, and more importantly – more powerful.
The Leeds-based researchers are promising that their jelly batteries are as safe as polymer batteries, perform like liquid-filled batteries, but are 10 to 20% the price of either.
The secret to their success lies in blending a rubber-like polymer with a conductive, liquid electrolyte into a thin, flexible film of gel that sits between the battery electrodes.
“The polymer gel looks like a solid film, but it actually contains about 70% liquid electrolyte,” explained the study’s lead author, Professor Ian Ward from the University of Leeds.
One of side benefits of this new battery technology is that it can also be formed into shapes and can be exceedingly thin without losing any of its power output, which could have an interesting effect on over designing of things like smartphones and tablets at some point in the future.
