Batteries

by Chris Woodford. Last updated: August 20, 2016.

No cellphones, laptops, or flashlights. No electric cars or robot vacuums.

No quartz watches, pocket calculators, or transistor radios. And, for those
of us who need a helping hand with our daily lives, no heart pacemakers,
hearing aids, or electric wheelchairs.

Life without batteries would be a trip back in time, a century or two, when
pretty much the only way of making portable energy was either steam power
or clockwork. Batterieshandy, convenient power supplies as small as a
fingernail or as big as a trunkgive us a sure and steady supply of electrical
energy whenever and wherever we need it. Although we get through billions
of them every year and they have a big environmental impact, we couldn't live
our modern lives without them.

You might think a battery looks just about as dull as anything you've ever
seen. But the minute you hook it up to something, it starts buzzing with
electricity. That dull little cylinder turns into your very own micro power
plant! Let's see what's going on in there...

Photo: Disposable batteries like this one are really convenient, but they
can be expensive in the long haul and they're bad for the environment. A better
option is to use rechargeable batteries. They cost more to begin with, but
you can charge them hundreds of timesso they save an absolute fortune and
help save the planet!
What is a battery?
A battery is a self-contained, chemical power pack that can produce a limited
amount of electrical energy wherever it's needed. Unlike normal electricity,
which flows to your home through wires that start off in a power plant, a
battery slowly converts chemicals packed inside it into electrical energy,
typically released over a period of days, weeks, months, or even years.

The basic idea of portable power is nothing new; people have always had ways
of making energy on the move. Even prehistoric humans knew how to burn wood
to make fire, which is another way of producing energy (heat) from chemicals
(burning releases energy using a chemical reaction called combustion). By
the time of the Industrial Revolution (in the 18th and 19th centuries), we'd
mastered the art of burning lumps of coal to make power, so fueling things
like steam locomotives. But it can take an hour to gather enough wood to cook
a meal, and a locomotive's boiler typically takes several hours to get hot
enough to make steam. Batteries, by contrast, give us instant, portable
energy; turn the key in your electric car and it leaps to life in seconds!

What are the main parts of a battery?

The basic power unit inside a battery is called a cell, and it consists of
three main bits. There are two electrodes (electrical terminals) and a
chemical called an electrolyte in between them. For our convenience and
safety, these things are usually packed inside a metal or plastic outer case.
There are two more handy electrical terminals, marked with a plus (positive)
and minus (negative), on the outside connected to the electrodes that are
inside. The difference between a battery and a cell is simply that a battery
consists of two or more cells hooked up so their power adds together.

When you connect a battery's two electrodes into a circuit (for example, when
you put one in a flashlight), the electrolyte starts buzzing with activity.
Slowly, the chemicals inside it are converted into other substances. Ions
(atoms with too few or too many electrons) are formed from the materials in
the electrodes and take part in chemical reactions with the electrolyte. At
the same time, electrons march from one terminal to the other through the
outer circuit, powering whatever the battery is connected to. This process
continues until the electrolyte is completely transformed. At that point,
the ions stop moving through the electrolyte, the electrons stop flowing
through the circuit, and the battery is flat.
Why do batteries need two different materials?
"It is the difference in metals that does it."

Alessandro Volta (commenting on Galvani's experiments).

It's important to note that the electrodes in a battery are always made from
two dissimilar materials (so never both from the same metal), which obviously
have to be conductors of electricity. This is the key to how and why a battery
works: one of the materials "likes" to give up electrons, the other likes
to receive them. If both electrodes were made from the same material, that
wouldn't happen and no current would flow.

To understand this, we need to delve back through the history of electricity

to 1792, when Italian scientist Luigi Galvani found he could make electricity
with a bit of help from a frog's leg.

Famously, Galvani stuck a couple of different metals into the leg of a dead
frog and produced an electric current, which he believed was made by the frog
releasing its "animal electricity." In fact, as his countryman Alessandro
Volta soon realized, the important thing was that Galvani had used two
different metals. In effect, the frog's body was working as the electrolyte
of a battery made with two different metallic electrodes stuck into it. Dead
or alive, there was nothing special about the frog; a glass jar full of the
right chemicalsor even a lemonwould have worked just as well.

What was so special about the electrodes? Chemical elements differ in their
ability to pull electrons toward themor give them up to other elements that
pull on them more. We call this tendency electronegativity. Stick two
different metals into an electrolyte, then connect them through an outer
circuit, and you get a tug-of-war going on between them. One of the metals
wins out and pulls electrons from the other, through the outer circuitand
that flow of electrons from one metal to the other is how a battery powers
the circuit. If the two terminals of a battery were made from the same material,
there'd be no net flow of electrons and no power would ever be produced.

That's the theory anyway. Now let's look at it in practice.

Artwork: Have you ever made a simple battery by pushing a zinc nail and a
copper coin into a lemon? It works because these two different metals have
atoms with different abilities to hold on to the electrons they contain. The
zinc atoms in the nail lose their electrons (blue, e), which flow out through
the circuit you've made to the copper atoms in the coin. This flow of electrons
makes a current that delivers useful power, capable of lighting up a tiny
bulb or LED (red). Read more about how to make a lemon battery and the chemical
reactions that power it.

How does a battery really work?

Where does the power in a battery actually come from? Let's take a closer
look!
Here's my battery hooked up to a flashlight bulb to make a simple circuit.
I've unwrapped a paperclip to make a piece of connecting wire and I'm holding
that between the bottom of the battery and the side of the bulb. If you look
closely, you can see the bulb is shining. That's because electrons are
marching through it!

Anode and cathode?

Now here's what's going on inside. The battery's positive terminal (shown
just above my left thumb in the photo and colored red in the artwork below)
is connected to a positive electrode that's mostly hidden inside the battery.
We call this the cathode. The outer case and the bottom of the battery make
up the negative terminal, or negative electrode, which is also called the
anode and colored green in the artwork. The paperclip wire is represented
in the art by the blue line.

Let's quickly clear up one point of confusion. At school, you may have learned
that the cathode is the negative electrode and the anode the positive
electrode? However, that applies only to electrolysis (passing electricity
through a chemical to split it up). Batteries are like electrolysis going
backwards (they split up chemicals to make electricity) so the terms anode
and cathode are switched around. Okay? To avoid confusion, I suggest it's
best not to use the terms anode and cathode at all. It's better to say
"positive terminal" and "negative terminal" and then it's always clear what
you mean, whether you're talking about batteries or electrolysis.
Chemical reactions

Now back to our battery. The positive and negative electrodes are separated
by the chemical electrolyte. It can be a liquid, but in an ordinary battery
it is more likely to be a dry powder.

When you connect the battery to a lamp and switch on, chemical reactions start
happening. One of the reactions generates positive ions (shown here as big
yellow blobs) and electrons (smaller brown blobs) at the negative electrode.
The positive ions flow into the electrolyte, while the electrons (smaller
brown blobs) flow around the outside circuit (blue line) to the positive
electrode and make the lamp light up on the way. There's a separate chemical
reaction happening at the positive electrode, where incoming electrons
recombine with ions taken out of the electrolyte, so completing the circuit.

The electrons and ions flow because of the chemical reactions happening
inside the batteryusually two of them going on simultaneously. The exact
reactions depend on the materials from which the electrodes and electrolyte
are made. (Some examples are given further on in this article where we compare
different types of batteries. If you want to know more about the reactions
for a particular battery, enter the type of the battery you're interested
in followed by the words "anode cathode reactions" in your favorite search
engine.) Whatever chemical reactions take place, the general principle of
electrons going around the outer circuit, and ions reacting with the
electrolyte (moving into it or out of it), applies to all batteries. As a
battery generates power, the chemicals inside it are gradually converted into
different chemicals. Their ability to generate power dwindles, the battery's
voltage slowly falls, and the battery eventually runs flat. In other words,
if the battery cannot produce positive ions because the chemicals inside it
have become depleted, it can't produce electrons for the outer circuit
either.

Now you may be thinking: "Hang on, this doesn't make any sense! Why don't
the electrons just take a short cut and hop straight from the negative
electrode through the electrolyte to the positive electrode? It turns out
that, because of the chemistry of the electrolyte, electrons can't flow
through it in this simple way. In fact, so far as the electrons are concerned,
the electrolyte is pretty much an insulator: a barrier they cannot cross.
Their easiest path to the positive electrode is actually by flowing through
the outer circuit.
Types of batteries
Batteries come in all different shapes, sizes, voltages, and capacities
(amounts of stored charge or energy). Although they can be made with all sorts
of different chemical electrolytes and electrodes, there are really only two
main types: primary and secondary. Primary batteries are ordinary,
disposable ones that can't normally be recharged; secondary batteries can
be recharged, sometimes hundreds of times. You can recharge secondary
batteries just by passing a current through them in the opposite direction
to which it would normally flow (when it's discharging); you can't normally
do this with primary batteries. When you charge your cellphone, you are really
just running the battery (and the chemical reactions inside it) in reverse.

Photo: A selection of disposable (primary) and rechargeable (secondary)

batteries I've just gathered up from my home. The zinc-carbon, alkaline, and
lithium camera batteries are primaries. The nickel-cadmium and lithium-ion
batteries are secondaries.

Primary batteries

You might think single-use, disposable batteries are rather nasty and old-hat;
since we have to throw them away, they work out expensive to use and they're
anything but environmentally friendly. Even so, they have a major advantage:
they generally store much more energy and last significantly longer than
rechargeables the same size. You'll have noticed this straight away if you've
switched from using disposable to rechargeable batteries in something like
a flashlight. Yes, you save a lot of money (rechargeables cost almost nothing
to charge up) and you're helping the planet, but you'll need to recharge your
batteries much more often than you'd need to replace disposables. Sometimes
that doesn't matter at all (it's easy enough to have two sets of rechargeables
and keep one set always charged); other times, it's crucially important:
heart pacemakers, for example, have surgically implanted, disposable lithium
batteries inside. It's simply not practical to keep cutting open someone's
chest just so you can recharge their pacemaker batteries! In short, while
it's best to use rechargeable batteries if you possibly can, there are times
when disposable batteries are better.

The three main kinds of primary batteries are zinc carbon, alkaline, and
lithium. Since there's no liquid in them, they're often referred to as dry
cells.

Zinc-carbon

The cheapest, ordinary, everyday batteries you get for things like
flashlights are zinc carbon ones. Disposable zinc-carbon batteries date back
to about 1865, when they were invented by French engineer Georges Leclanch;
that's why they're sometimes referred to as Leclanch cells. Although they're
inexpensive, they don't store that much energy or last that long.
"Zinc-carbon" is essentially a description of how the battery is made: the
positive electrode is made from a carbon rod surrounded by powdered carbon
and manganese (IV) oxide; the negative electrode (the outer case) is a zinc
alloy; and the electrolyte is a paste of ammonium chloride. When a zinc-carbon
battery is wired into a circuit, different reactions happen at the two
electrodes. At the negative electrode, zinc is converted into zinc ions and
electrons, which provide power to the circuit. At the positive electrode,
manganese (IV) oxide turns to manganese (III) oxide and ammonia.
Photo: The cheapest batteries are usually made from zinc and carbon.

Alkaline

Alkaline batteries look much the same as zinc carbon ones, but pack more punch:
they store more energy and last longer, which is why they cost more. They
stay charged for several years, which makes them a very dependable source
of power. Although they look exactly the same as zinc carbon ones, they use
different chemicals and different reactions take place inside them. The
positive electrode is based on manganese (IV) oxide and the negative
electrode is made of zinc, but the electrolyte is a concentrated alkaline
solution (potassium hydroxide). Power is produced through two chemical
reactions. At the positive electrode, manganese (IV) oxide is converted into
manganese (III) oxide and hydroxyl ions. At the negative electrode, zinc
reacts with the hydroxyl ions to release the electrons that power the circuit.

Button batteries

Many button-cell batteries (widely used in things like quartz watches and
hearing aids) work the same way as ordinary alkalines, with similar electrode
materials and alkaline electrolytes; others use lithium and organic
electrolytes and work through different chemical reactions. Look closely at
a button cell and you'll see that the top central section forms the negative
electrode, which is made from either zinc or lithium. The outer case and
bottom form the positive electrode, typically made from manganese oxide,
silver oxide, or copper oxide. Once, button batteries commonly used mercury
oxide and graphite as the positive electrode, but mercury is toxic so it's
now largely been withdrawn from batteries because of health concerns.

Secondary batteries (rechargeables)

We don't often refer to "secondary" batteries; it's much more common to talk
about rechargeables. Until portable gadgets like cellphones (mobile phones)
became popular, in the 1980s and 1990s, rechargeable batteries were
relatively uncommon in things like flashlights and toys, because they didn't
last anything like as long as disposable ones; most were either
nickel-cadmium (or, occasionally, nickel-metal-hydride). In those days, by
far the most common rechargeable batteries were the lead-acid "accumulators"
used in cars. This a quick overview of rechargeables. You can read more in
our main article on how battery chargers work.

Lead-acid
Tried, tested, and trusted, lead-acid batteries have been with us since the
middle of the 19th century. With an overall rating of 12 volts, they have
six separate cells, each producing 2 volts. Crudely reduced to its basic
components, each cell has a "spongy" lead metal electrode (negative), a lead
dioxide electrode (positive), and a sulfuric acid electrolyte. As the battery
discharges, both electrodes become coated with lead sulfate and the sulfuric
acid is largely converted into water, while electrons flow out around the
external circuit to provide power.

Photo: A typical lead-acid car battery (accumulator).

Lead-acid batteries made it possible to start cars without the help of a

dangerous and dirty hand crank. Normally, you never have to recharge
thembecause your car does that automatically. The battery discharges
(gives up a little of its energy) to help the car's gasoline engine start
up, and recharges (gets energy back again) when the engine begins generating
electrical energy through a device called an alternator. As for disadvantages,
lead-acid batteries are relatively big, surprisingly heavy (try lifting
one!), expensive, and can't be fully charged and discharged too many times.
Another problem is their use of toxic lead metal, which can cause
environmental problems when they're dumped in landfills.

Nickel-cadmium

Nickel-cadmium (NiCd, pronounced "nicad") are widely used as replacements

for disposable 1.5-volt batteries in things like toys, flashlights, and power
tools. They're relatively cheap, can be charged and discharged hundreds of
times, and, properly treated, will last about a decade.

Although very dependable, it's often said that NiCd batteries need to be
discharged fully before you charge them up or the amount of charge they will
store (and their effective lifespan) can be greatly reduced. Opinions vary
on whether this is true and, if so, why it happens, but as a rule of thumb,
regularly discharging batteries completely and then recharging them is a good
practice. Another problem with NiCd batteries is the toxic cadmium metal they
contain. If they are buried in a landfill, instead of properly recycled, the
cadmium can escape into the soil and could potentially pollute watercourses
nearby.

Photo: Don't throw your batteries in the trash! Some batteries contain toxic
metals like cadmium, mercury, and lead, but all batteries are made of useful
materials that can be recycled into new things. Instead of tossing your
batteries away, try to collect them up and take them to a recycling point.

Nickel-metal-hydride (NiMH)

Nickel metal hydride batteries work in a similar way, but suffer less from
the so-called "memory effect." They became a popular alternative to NiCd
batteries in the 1990s, partly because of environmental concerns about
cadmium. NiMH batteries work more effectively in gadgets like cellphones,
which are often "topped-up" with a quick recharge instead of a complete
discharge and recharge (which is more typical with something like power
tools).

Lithium-ion

Lithium-ion batteries are the fastest-growing type of rechargeables; there

are probably lithium-ion batteries in your cellphone, MP3 player, and laptop
computer. What's so good about lithium? It's a lightweight metal that easily
forms ions, so it's excellent for making batteries. The latest lithium-ion
batteries can store about twice as much energy as traditional NiCd
rechargeables, work at higher voltages, and are more environmentally
friendly, but don't last as long. Even so, they can be charged and discharged
hundreds of times and typically last several years, so they're great for
everyday use in electronic gadgets that aren't meant to last that long.

How do they work? When you plug a cellphone or laptop into the power supply,
the lithium-ion battery inside starts buzzing with chemical activity. The
battery's job is to store as much electricity as possible, as fast as possible.
It does this through a chemical reaction that shunts lithium ions (lithium
atoms that have lost an electron to become positively charged) from one part
of the battery to another. When you unplug the power and use your laptop or
phone, the battery switches into reverse: the ions move the opposite way and
the battery gradually loses its charge. Read more in our main article on how
lithium-ion batteries work.

Fuel cells

These aren't actually batteries at all, though they're similar inasmuch as

they produce electrical energy through chemical reactions. You can find out
more about them in our separate article on fuel cells.

Measuring batteries
When the battery dies in your flashlight, you go out and buy a replacement.
Typically, you just buy one the same size, so it'll fit inside the case. But
batteries are like boxes: just as bigger boxes can hold more stuff, so the
size of a battery is actually a measurement of how much electrical energy
it can store. Why? Bigger batteries contain more chemical electrolyte and
bigger electrodes so they can release more energy (or the same energy over
a longer period). AAA, AA, C, and D-sized batteries are all rated at 1.5 volts,
but they're all different sizes. The bigger ones (D and C) hold more stored
energy than the smaller ones (AA and AAA). If you want a more precise idea
of how much electrical energy a battery holds, look on the side for a
measurement in mAh (milliampere hours, which is a measurement of stored
electric charge often printed on small batteries) or Watt hours (a
measurement of electrical energy used on bigger batteries).
Photo: Bigger batteries generally store more energy than smaller ones. A
bigger mAh value means that a battery stores more charge and lasts longer,
but it will also take longer to recharge as well.

Voltage is the other important measurement marked on batteries. The higher

the voltage, the more current a battery will produce when it's connected into
a given circuit, which is why this kind of voltage is sometimes called an
electromotive force (EMF). The power something like a lamp or electric motor
produces (or consumes) is proportional to the voltage across it, so a bigger
voltage usually means more power. In other words, high-power gadgets (ones
that need more energy and electrical "force") tend to need higher voltages
than low-power ones, which is why, for example, cordless power drills (with
powerful electric motors) need higher-voltage batteries than simple
flashlights (which only have to power little light bulbs or LEDs).

A brief history of batteries

250 BCAD 224: Some historians claim that the first battery was
invented around this time, based on the archeological discovery of iron
and copper pieces (resembling electrodes) and a clay jar near Baghdad in
the 1930s. Although this discovery is still commonly referred to as the
"Baghdad battery" or "Parthian battery" (after the place where it was
discovered and the historic period it dates from), other historians doubt
whether it would in fact have produced an electric current or functioned
as a battery.
1744: Ewald Georg von Kleist (17001748) invents the Leyden jar, a
glass container with metal foil on both the inside and outside faces that
will store electrical charge. Although it's really a capacitor (a device
 for storing static electricity), it serves the same purpose as a modern
battery: it's a portable electrical energy store. (A lot of early
experiments into electricity used Leyden jars as their power source where
we would use batteries today.)
1749: US statesman and inventor Benjamin Franklin (17061790) first
uses the term "battery" to refer to a number of capacitors connected to
one another.
1800: Italian physicist Alessandro Volta (17451827) invents the
Voltaic pile, the first practical battery. He makes it by stacking up zinc
and silver discs, alternately, separated by cardboard and soaked in
saltwater.
1836: English chemist John Daniell (17901845) invents the Daniell
cell, a more reliable battery.
1859: French physician Gaston Plant (18341889) develops the world's
first rechargeable, lead-acid battery.
1868: Another Frenchman, Georges Leclanch (18391882), develops the
modern zinc-carbon battery.
1949: Canadian chemical engineer Lewis Urry (19272004) invents the
alkaline and lithium batteries for the Eveready Battery company.
1970s: While working at Oxford University in England, German-born
American chemist John B. Goodenough (1922) and his colleagues figure
out the science behind lithium-ion batteries. The first commercial
batteries using the technology are developed by Sony in the 1990s.

Find out more

On this website

Battery chargers
Electricity
Fuel cells
Lithium-ion rechargeable batteries
Supercapacitors

Books

For older readers

 The Battery: How Portable Power Sparked a Technological Revolutionby
Henry Schlesinger. Smithsonian Books, 2010

For younger readers

These are all aimed at ages 912 or so:

Battery Science: Make Widgets that Work and Gadgets that Goby Doug
Stillinger. Klutz, 2003.
Young Discoverers: Batteries, Bulbs, and Wiresby David Glover.
Kingfisher, 2002.
Electric Mischief: Battery-Powered Gadgets Kids Can Buildby Alan
Bartholomew. Kids Can Press, 2002.
Eyewitness: Electricityby Steve Parker. Dorling Kindersley, 2000.

History of batteries

Volta's Life and Works: This great website by the University of Pavia
has lots of good information about Alessandro Volta's pioneering
experiments with electricity and batteries.
Leclanch battery: The London Science Museum has some great photos of
the batteries developed in 1868 by Georges Leclanch (18391882). These
were effectively the prototypes of modern, disposable zinc-carbon
batteries. [Archived via the Wayback Machine.]
Miniature Power: How long a step from handie-talkie to hearing aid?by
Eric S. Hintz. Chemical Heritage Foundation. A brief history of batteries,
from Baghdad to the present day. [Archived via the Wayback Machine].

Articles

Tips and Myths About Extending Smartphone Battery Lifeby Brian Chen.
The New York Times. February 24, 2016. Some smartphone settings help to
extend battery life; others make no difference; here's how to tell one
from the other.
Shaky Battery Maker Claims an Advanceby Bill Vlasic and Matthew Wald.
The New York Times. June 11, 2012. The fluctuating fortunes of battery
maker A123.
Can a Polymer Membrane Be the Next Big Thing in Battery Technology?by
Dexter Johnson. IEEE Spectrum. October 3, 2011. A new polystyrene-based
polymer could prove more effective than conventional batteries and
supercapacitors.