If this new battery breakthrough goes mainstream, you may be allowed to use your external charger on flights again

Lithium-ion batteries are so ubiquitous that you’re probably reading these words on a device that has one installed right now. They’re pretty handy. They charge fast and can hold a lot of juice for your laptop or phone, so why wouldn’t we just keep using them forever ? Well, they require lithium which has to be mined out of the Earth itself, so that won’t last for all eternity. Oh, and they can explode, making them a risk when left next to your bed or in an unmanned part of a plane, so that’s not ideal. Luckily, a new breakthrough means we may be able to move on from them.

Enter sodium-ion batteries. As reported by , a new experiment performed by researchers at the Tokyo University of Science has yielded promising results.

Lithium-ion batteries work by using a graphite cathode to store the charged lithium ions—this is what actually causes your battery to be charged. Sodium ions need hard carbon instead, and previously, it was found that the sodium ions got jammed when trying to flow into the porous material.

Now, I’ll admit, the electrical course in my engineering degree was so confusing I decided to switch to film and TV studies, but from what I remember, as ions enter a battery—or the part of the battery that stores them—the build up of their charge creates a repelling effect that slows the whole process down. This effect is why your phone gets to 50% charge so quickly but feels like it takes forever to actually reach 100%. If the repelling effect were great enough, it could stop a battery charging entirely.

The scientists who obviously didn’t quit learning about electricity decided to combine the hard carbon with aluminium oxide and found this allowed sodium ions to flow properly, making this kind of battery much more feasible.

There are several benefits. As it turns out, sodium ions require less energy to cluster together and charge up a battery, and it’s also far, far easier to get sodium—we can pull it out of seawater using electrolysis.

The sodium-ion batteries are also deemed a lot safer than lithium-ion ones because they aren’t as prone to catching fire when damaged, so you may be able to put them in your checked luggage or charge your phone on the plane using your external battery charger if they enter the mainstream market.

If you want to learn more, you can read . If you want a less dense breakdown, you can from the Tokyo University of Science.