Fergie's Tech Blog

Need for Battery Power Runs Into Basic Hurdles of Science

Damon Darlin and Barnaby J. Feder write in The New York Times:

It always seems to happen: Long before it is time to stow your tray table, your laptop battery gives out, and you spend the rest of your cross-country trip reading the SkyMall catalog.

In the information age, people want their electronics everywhere they go, and they want them to be on all the time. But they rely on batteries that have not improved as rapidly as the devices they power. Moore’s Law, which offers a yardstick for the exponential advances in computer chips, has no counterpart in the world of batteries.

Researchers are certainly trying to improve the situation, in part because there is money to be made. Portable rechargeable batteries are expected to be a $6.2 billion market this year, and more than one billion batteries will be made by some of the largest electronics companies in the world: Sony, Sanyo, Matsushita and Samsung.

posted by Fergie @ 8/15/2006 10:30:00 PM