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Researchers at Dalhousie University have identified an alternative to the tape used in commercial lithium-ion batteries that almost entirely prevents the power sources in laptops and other devices from losing their charge when sitting idle.

The discovery came after the team determined earlier that a tape made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and commonly used in lithium-ion batteries is not chemically stable during battery operation, leading devices like computers and phones to lose their charge even if not being used -- a phenomenon called self-discharge.

The finding prompted researchers to look into other options from commercially available tape materials, leading them to discover that using chemically stable polypropylene (PP) tape instead of PET can decrease self-discharge by up to 70 per cent and increase battery life up to 10 per cent.

PhD student Anu Adamson and Michael Metzger, an assistant professor and the Herzberg-Dahn chair and in the Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, led the research initiative described in a new paper published today in Nature Materials.

Adamson is available to discuss the discovery and how changing the tape would transform the way batteries are built and could be easily implemented by battery manufacturers due to the simplicity of the alteration.

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Media contact:

Alison Auld  
Senior Research Reporter  
Communications, Marketing and Creative Services  
Dalhousie University  
Cell: 1-902-220-0491  
Email: alison.auld@dal.ca