Every cloud has a silver lining, or so they say. While Samsung may still be looking for their silver lining from the Note 7 incident, we the consumers may be on track to receive batteries in our smartphones that could help, should the battery get too hot.
Researchers from Stanford University have designed lithium-ion batteries that contain a fire-extinguishing material that gets released if the battery gets too hot.
Flame retardant triphenyl phosphate (TPP) sits inside a shell within the electrolyte fluid. The shell melts when the temperature reaches 150C (302F), releasing the chemical compound.
When tested, battery fires were put out in 0.4 seconds.
The Stanford University research team's peer-reviewed paper has been published by the journal Science Advances.
We are still awaiting Samsung's final report on the cause of the Note 7 exploding batteries.