Building a better battery

updated 1:44 p.m. ET Oct. 17, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO - For most of us, a dead battery in our cell phone or digital camera is an annoyance. For surgical tools salesman Jason Paul, it can cost him big money.

Paul counts on his smartphone — a cell phone that can perform computing chores — to check his stocks and send e-mail. He logs more than 3,000 minutes a month in calls to his clients. He also uses his phone to show doctors video clips of how his products perform in the operating room.

“When I’m using it like this, which is most days, I maybe get two or three hours out of the batteries,” says Paul, who works for Fremont, Calif.-based Rita Medical Systems Inc. “If it goes out and some doctor is trying to get a hold of me and can’t, then they get angry. You’re only one bad case away from losing a customer.”

Paul, 29, is among a growing number of consumers becoming ever more dependent on their energy-hungry gadgets. But smartphones, laptops, digital music players and portable videogame consoles tend to gobble up more power with every additional feature.

Battery makers are racing to keep up, finding new ways to pack more power into smaller and smaller spaces.

The technical challenges are daunting. Most people have little understanding of the complex and volatile chemistry that occurs in their batteries each time they videotape the kids at soccer practice or listen to their iPod, says Brian Barnett, managing director of research and development firm Tiax Llc.

“Can you imagine a chemical plant that has to operate in a closed condition and send energy forward and backward 500 times?” Barnett said. “And you can’t send anybody in to do maintenance. People who operate chemical plants laugh, but that’s what we do with a rechargeable cell.”

Much of the research is centered on improving the lithium ion battery, which has revolutionized the electronics industry since it was widely adopted in the mid-1990s. Found in most mobile electronics gear, lithium ion batteries are energy dense, smaller and lighter than nickel-based batteries, but are often more expensive.

They work by mixing lithium cobaltate at the positive terminal and graphite at the negative. The two materials produce a lot of energy when they react with each other.

Some of the scientists involved believe lithium ion has maxed out as a power source. And some companies are already coming up with new materials to replace cobaltate and graphite.

Sony Corp. and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., which makes Panasonic brand products, each announced earlier this year that they had developed longer-lasting lithium ion batteries by tweaking the chemical equation.

Both companies say their batteries can boost the life of a battery by up to 30 percent, claims that some analysts question.

Sony says it replaced graphite with a mixture of tin, cobalt, and carbon for its “hybrid” battery, which is being rolled out exclusively in the company’s new DVD Handycam camcorders.

Mike Kahn, a Sony senior product manager, said the new materials stuff more ions into a cell, extending the life of the battery by 20 percent in normal conditions. The hybrid outperforms standard batteries in cold weather by 30 percent, and recharges faster, he says.

Kahn declined to say when Sony’s innovation would be brought to cell phones, laptops or other products.

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