U.S. officials grounded Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner because the
aircraft's advanced batteries appear to be malfunctioning. But
what's the problem? And can it be fixed? To reduce weight on the
plane, Boeing relied heavily on lithium ion batteries -- the
same type found in mobile phones and laptops. While these
batteries can produce a lot of power for their weight, they're
also prone to problems. It was these same batteries that caught
fire in laptops a few years back and, more recently, were
suspected culprits in electric car fires. How they work: Lithium
ion batteries use ions from the element lithium to tease out
energy from the battery's electrodes, according to Donald
Sadoway, a materials chemistry professor at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. This is different from other types of
batteries commonly used in electronics, which use a combination
of nickel and cadmium or lead and acid, among other things. Why
they're better: Lithium is the lightest of all metals, so its
ions hold energy more efficie