Matsushita Electric, parent company of Panasonic, has stepped into Sony’s shoes to ‘solve’ the laptop battery overheating crisis.
The company says it has created a mass-production system for safer lithium-ion batteries.
It began shipping the industry’s first 2.9 Ah1 high capacity batteries in April this year and is now ready to mass-produce the products.
With the proliferation of notebooks, cameras and other portable devices, the demand for robust and high density batteries follows, Matsushita says, though, increasing energy-density raises the risk of overheating and igniting due to short-circuiting.
This year there several notebook vendors including Apple, Dell, and Sony recalling laptop batteries. Some of the batteries were overheating and in a few instances, caught on fire.
The solution the company is offering is by forming a heat resistance layer (HRL) consisting of an insulating metal oxide on the surface of the electrodes. Lithium-ion batteries contain a polyolefin2 separator for insulation, Matsushita explains. The HRL used in the Panasonic battery has better insulating and heat-resistant characteristics than polyolefin, so even if a short-circuit occurs, it will cease without causing the battery to overheat, the company claims.
See: www.panasonic.net
