Matsushita: Battery Overheating Solved?

The replacement of a thin plastic resin insulating layer, or polyolefin, with a new and undisclosed heat resistance layer, could prevent future incidents of lithium-ion batteries spontaneously catching fire. The battery producing arm of Matsushita, Panasonic's parent company, claims it's now ready to begin producing batteries with the new insulator.

The recent episodes of batteries overheating and even exploding that have plagued Sony and other manufacturers all year could be due to the presence of foreign metal materials that cause short circuits in batteries.

Short circuits are nothing new to the stored power field; but since a lithium ion electrode is highly charged, if that material pierces this Saran Wrap-like layer, the resulting interplay can cause the whole device to spend its potential in a mere few seconds' time.

Matsushita's solution appears to involve an insulating metal oxide called a "heat resistance layer" (HRL), in addition to the polyolefin layer. Besides providing better heat insulation, the company says today it will actually help increase energy density.

What's curious about today's announcement is the lack of the word "Intel." Up to this point, Matsushita has been jointly producing high-duration Li-ion battery technology in a joint partnership with Intel, the result of which was the initial production earlier this year of so-called "eight-hour" laptop batteries.

Conceivably, since Matsushita develops Li-ion batteries for all classes of devices, and the Intel partnership focuses on laptops, Intel may not have been involved. But this does raise the question of how soon we'll see safer laptop and notebook computer batteries after the wide dissemination of the new HRL in more common AA- and C-cell form factors.