Batteries left unused eventually die and sometimes it’s a rather violent death, with the battery exploding and leaving a mess in your consumer electronics gear or the kitchen drawer where you had it stored. Even if you use a battery until it’s drained of power, what’s left over is still something of an environmental nightmare. Remaining chemicals can leach out into the ground and damage water sources, wildlife, etc.

mPhase technology new patent-pending Smart Nanobattery can be dormant and harmless in non-use, provide energy when activated and then even render itself harmless when it has no more power to give. That’s at least what mPhase if promising in its recent announcement. According to a brief press release, the nano batteries--still in prototype phase--uses “various chemicals as electrolytes residing on top of nano structures in a dormant state and when triggered, cause an electrochemical reaction to produce a measurable voltage and current under a load.” Apparently this chemical reaction then knows enough to reserve some cells that can “create the neutralizing chemical reaction at the end of life.”