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Rather than disposing of batteries after two or three years, we could have recyclable batteries that last for up to nine years, by using high-frequency sound waves to remove rust that inhibits battery performance, the team says.

Only 10% of used handheld batteries, including for mobile phones, are collected for recycling in Australia, which is low by international standards. The remaining 90% of batteries go to landfill or are disposed of incorrectly, which causes considerable damage to the environment.

The high cost of recycling lithium and other materials from batteries is a major barrier to these items being reused, but the team’s innovation could help to address this challenge.

The team are working with a nanomaterial called MXene, a class of materials they say promises to be an exciting alternative to lithium for batteries in the future.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-34699-3

I can't wait for smartphone companies to not use this technology!

i keep my phones for like 6 years until the batteries aren't good anymore. it's called a compromise

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This is a bit misleading.

This doesn't apply to current batteries but rather some magical future battery which rusts. You can remove this rust with sound waves yet, removing the material would lesson its lifespan anyway, right? Since it doesn't undo the oxidisation process.

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Phones are all sealed up now and batteries are soldered. This is going to cost more than the value of the phone.

With the right to repair stuff going on, there's absolutely no way that batteries will be soldered. (they actually never were as far as I'm aware)

How would this even work anyways? It looks like you'd have to take the battery out of the phone (which is a pretty big ordeal now), take the material out of the battery packaging, treat it and out it back together.

Seems hardly practical.

You did not read the article

Not magical. One of the rules in this subreddit is to assume basic competence of the researchers. They have good reason to do this research.

Gonna be honest here, I'm starting to wonder what cheap ass, peak capitalism, planned obsolescence kind of back end products most people buy for their batteries to last only 2-3 years.

I've had phones with li-ion batteries that still work for 8+ years. The motherboards and protective plates have started to corrode and the plastic has started to degrade and fall off in chunks, but the batteries don't shows any wear and tear. And that was a $350 low/mid tier phone at the time. I'm even thinking of rooting it to install a custom Rom and give it a few more years of life, if I can find a back plate replacement cause the buttons fell off.

Every month a new battery that will never come

>Rather than disposing of batteries after two or three years

Interesting to frame it this way, given that most phones nowadays don't even feature easily replaceable batteries.

People don't "dispose of batteries". If anything they dispose entire phones. Not to mention that most "phone batteries" I have come across actually last a lot longer than two or three years to begin with.

>Only 10% of used handheld batteries, including for mobile phones, are collected for recycling in Australia, which is low by international standards. The remaining 90% of batteries go to landfill or are disposed of incorrectly, which causes considerable damage to the environment.

>The high cost of recycling lithium and other materials from batteries is a major barrier to these items being reused, but the team’s innovation could help to address this challenge.

They don't actually adress the issue they are complaining about here, which is "handheld batteries" not being collected for recycling. How is introducing yet another "revolutionary" battery technology going to prevent phones ending up in landfills becasue people dispose of them incorrectly?

Answer: It won't.

What a strange article.

Does anyone know what the long term solution is for technology? If we keep throwing everything into the trash how long until we run out of the most valuable resources needed for important electronics? Anyone know?

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Who throws things in the trash?

My electronics are all recycled - by NYC law, actually.

A bit of a pain in the butt to hold on to old devices and electrical equipment until an electronics recycling day, but even the copper and magnets from random electrical/appliance devices get reused in this way.

Outside of NY, I have to pay a small fee to bring my electronics to a container at the local garbage/recycling center, which then gets transported to a similar electronics recycling/recovery center.

If your town doesn’t have such a facility, you should fight for it!

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Mobile phones don't even have replaceable batteries anymore.

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At some point we just mine the landfills.

I think it's much less common for good recycling programs than you think, and I can guarantee that any program that requires people to make a special trip and pay a fee at garbage center is going to do very poorly, regardless of how easy it is.

Is rust a big issue in batteries?

You assume anyone alive on this planet knows what they are doing.

No one is in charge.