Heat Exposure Can Extend Life of Rechargeable Batteries, Says Caltech Study
Conventional wisdom has suggested that exposing batteries to heat can shorten their life expectancy. But a new study from researchers at the California Institute of Technology found that heat actually can break down the damaging branch-like structures called dendrites that…
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can grow inside rechargeable batteries, possibly extending battery life. When dendrites reach and contact the cathode in a rechargeable cell, they form a short circuit that forces electrical current to flow across the dendrites instead of the external circuit, rendering the battery useless and dead, said an announcement in the Journal of Chemical Physics trumpeting its publication Thursday of an article on the study. The researchers grew lithium dendrites on a test battery and heated them over a couple days, the article said. They found that temperatures up to 55 degrees Celsius (131 degrees Fahrenheit) shortened the dendrites by as much as 36 percent, it said. Though the experiments were done on lithium batteries, the dendrite phenomenon is common to all rechargeable cells, so the conclusions can be applied broadly, it said.