Lithium-oxygen batteries could be the future of smartphone evolution and solve the main problem reported by users for them, battery.
Thanks to the US Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, a prototype of one lithium-oxygen batteries was created, and based on the tests done on it, it seems that it stores up to 5 times more energy than normal lithium-ion batteries.
Although we are talking about a significant increase in the storage capacity of batteries that could end up in smartphones, the main problem until now was that this type of lithium-oxygen batteries they are thermodynamically unstable, so smartphones could suddenly explode during use.
However, the American laboratory found a solution, managing to produce crystallized lithium superoxide, LiO2, instead of lithium oxide, changing this element allowing the creation of batteries that are much more stable and more efficient for many charge/discharge cycles.
This discovery really opens a pathway for the potential development of a new kind of battery. Although a lot more research is needed, the cycle life of the battery is what we were looking for.
Moreover, the batteries will not require the introduction of oxygen from the outside to work, so they will be much more stable than anything created so far, the discovery being remarkable, but for now very far from being usable in the real world.
As usual, discoveries of this kind also come with the warning that from the prototype to offering it to the general public is an extremely long way that the product must travel, so that it is unlikely that we will have lithium batteries very soon oxygen in smartphones.
