The standard battery for gadgets is lithium-ion, which stores a lot of energy for its weight. But lithium is a rare Earth element with most of the deposits located in Chile, Argentina, China and Australia. This is one reason the batteries in the average laptop are so expensive.
A team at the Tokyo University of Science, led by Shinichi Komaba, have been looking at sodium-based batteries, using sodium ions as the cathode and carbon from ordinary sugar as the anode. In this form, the sodium-sucrose battery stored 20 percent more energy than one made with conventional carbon.
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