Unbelievable isn't it? A laptop battery that can keep your laptop going for 40 hours! Yes, research is underway at Stanford Tech to develop a hi-tech lithium ion battery that can juice up your laptop for 40 hours, keeping those charging woes at bay for a longer period.

Professor Yi Cui and his team resurrected an old but abandoned method for charging the batteries: Silicon anodes. These have a theoretical capacity ten times larger than that of the graphite anodes currently used, but were left for dead, as they expand up to 400 times when charged, smashing themselves in the process.

If the silicon is made into nanowires, however, the problem goes away. The silicon still expands, but doesn't pulverise the battery. Instead the nanowires jostle closer together, but don't break, and still transfer charge into the lithium. The diagram shows this best.

Apparently, the new battery uses a discarded technology that has been been revamped by Professor Yi Cui and team - silicon anodes in the form of nanowires for charging. This technology was earlier abandoned as the silicon expands up to 400 times when charged, exploding the battery in the process. Using silicon in the form of nanowires eliminates this danger.

So when can you start rejoicing? In a "few years time" is all the information we have at this moment.

Via Newlaunches