I was reading through the Alumni News Letter from my graduate alma-mater, UTD (The University of Texas At Dallas), and came across this article about a faculty member and one of his former students who have identified the cause of Lithium-ion battery overheating and the resulting fires. It turns out the problem is not in the design of the devices, or in the batter itself, rather it is the surface of the cell that the problem arises. They have posited a potential solution to the problem and I suspect at this point it becomes an engineering problem. Although this can't help the Lithium-Ion batteries already in place, it promises significant performance improvements in future laptops, tablets, and smart phones.

NOTE: The research was not funded by U. S. government or business sources, rather it was the South Korean government that financed the research. Just saying. 🙄

BRAGGING: You probably haven't heard of UTD because they do not have a football team, but their esports team is making quite a reputation for itself. Yes, it is an egghead school and the number 1 ranked public university in Texas and in all Texas Universities is outranked only by Rice University. (Okay, I'm bragging, but it is my alma-mater after all and as a graduate student, I taught the very first class of undergraduates and I like to think I had some hand in helping shape the university it has become. 👨🏻‍🎓

If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

— Albert Einstein