This new discovery could make your batteries last four times longer

This new technology could see battery lasting four times longer, and this happens because the chemical components help batteries lose their charging capabilities much slower than traditional batteries, according to TechRadar.

What this means is that our batteries will have a longer shelf life, not necessarily longer lasting time between charges.

Perhaps most impressively, the researchers, Wang Changan of Tsinghua University, in Beijing, and Li Ju of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, discovered the potential of the new technology by accident when studying how to remove oxide coating from aluminium nanoparticles.

While studying the nanoparticles the researchers found they could protect them using the conductive material titanium oxide which would replace the graphite anodes found in regular Li-ion batteries.

Because the graphite anodes expand and contract when the battery powers the device, the process leads to the battery decaying over time – which is why your smartphone's battery gets less effective every time it is charged.

Dr Wang and Dr Li built some batteries to test the new nanoparticles and found that after 500 cycles of charging and discharging the batteries, they still retained as much as four times the capacity as the traditional Lithium-ion batteries that were put through the same stress tests.

There was no mention of consumer products in the report, and the technology would have to be able to be made on an industrial scale, so we probably won't see these new batteries in smartphones any time soon. However, the technology has huge implications for future smartphones, along with battery powered industrial devices and even battery powered cars.