Unlike the nickel cadmium and nickel metal hydride, Li-ion batteries are rated low as far as durability is concerned. They are also tremendously harmful if neglected and are costly.

Lithium ion batteries are shaped into an extensive assortment of dimensions and forms in order to competently load the vacant gaps in the gadget that they service. They are, nonetheless, lightweight compared to their corresponding inferior batteries.

It is via the motion of lithium ions that these batteries’ power is stored. Being the 3rd insubstantial element, Lithium provides a considerable cutback in mass than other heavy metal batteries.

The volume of the electrodes, nevertheless, are efficiently “lodging” for the ions and put in mass, and additionally “burden” from the existing collectors, electrolyte, conductivity additives, casing, and electronics decrease the charge for every unit mass to slightly over that of other rechargeable batteries. The elevated attainable circuit energy of the Li-ion composition is its specialty in contrast to aqueous batteries like lead acid, nickel and nickel metal hydride cadmium.

Li-ion batteries also have no memory effect. Their self-discharge pace is low and is around 5% in a month whereas nickel metal hydride batteries is more than 30% in a month and nickel cadmium batteries is 10% in a month.

The Caring Do’s and Don’ts

The Do’s

a. Do charge the battery during the night upon purchasing your new Netbook Tablet PC or notebook.
b. Do allow the new battery to discharge completely (therefore use it) and after that re-charge it totally. This will standardize the battery and must be done once every month.
c. Do recharge the battery almost immediately once it is completely discharged. Not doing so will damage the battery for good.
d. Do – buy a new one as soon as it has reached 6 months since Lithium-Ion battery depreciates gradually.
e. Do bear in mind that the 50% of its life span is rated for a specific full amount of charging and discharging rounds. Refer to the User Manual or the Quick Guide of your Notebook. Therefore, if a battery has been given a rating of 3 hours with 500 charge and discharge rounds, the battery will still be deemed within the requirement although it only stayed for an hour and 45 minutes following 500 charge and discharge rounds.
f. Do allow air to flow in the region of the Notebook and Netbook Tablet PC to cool off the battery while in use and charging. Some Notebook has “legs” or small raisers. Use them to encourage good air flow.
g. Do remove the battery if they are to be stored for a few months. Ensure that the battery has more or less 50% charge or more.
h. Do provide sufficient aeration if you are to charge your Netbook Table PC or Notebook to allow the batteries to cool off.

The Don’ts

a. Never endanger the battery by exposing it to too much cold or heat such as a 10-35oC environment.
b. Never keep a fully charged battery; if you are to keep them, charge must only be about 50%.
c. Never let an almost flat battery to be unutilized for over one month or so. This will allow the battery to discharge gradually until it is completely discharged and will lead to its damage for good.
d. Never charge your Netbook Tablet PC or Notebook while in its case. This may lead to an overheated battery.
e. Never charge your Netbook Tablet PC or Notebook if they are on top of one another as it may also lead to an overheated battery.

Keep this in mind; the battery degrades gradually even if they have not been used. Therefore, you need to maintain the battery as cool as you can to hold back its deficiency significantly

Lithium Batteries versus Lithium Ion Batteries

Chemistry is the distinction between the two. Composed of lithium metal complexes, Lithium batteries are a not reusable source of energy; therefore they cannot be revitalized making them disposable. In contrast, a Lithium Ion battery is intercalated which means that it moves amid two inner electrodes in the lithium ion within the battery which explains why the battery can be revived.

The Upsides of Lithium Ion Technology

* Capable of accommodating more energy and is light in weight
* Single cell technology was used plus a tremendous energy mine compared to Nickel Cadmium (NiCad) and Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) batteries.
* Capable of accommodating their charge for longer periods compared with other batteries as well as stable energy is supplied until such time that the charge have been fully used.

The Downsides of Lithium Ion Batteries

There are only quite a few downsides. Makers of Lithium Ion batteries have been continuously improving the formula of Lithium Ion, but as in any product there is always a weak point.
* They are susceptible to high temperatures
* They break in spite of the rate of usage
* It can no longer be restored if the battery energy reaches a specific point as the built-in computer chip informs the battery to reject a charge

The above downsides are normally present with the first models of Lithium Ion batteries. Nevertheless, this must be taken into account to avoid impending problems. Enough is to say that they are not common anyway and can easily be solved.

Taking Care of Lithium Ion Batteries

* Keep them in a cold, arid area. This holds true to other batteries, too.
* Regularly use your Lithium Ion battery.
* Ensure that they are completely charged prior to keeping them. Check its energy level so that it will not run out of charge or go below the required charge limit. As much as possible, take them out on a regular basis to recharge and use them.

Guidelines for Lithium Ion Batteries

* If it is to be charged for the first time, charging must be done all night to keep them full. A word of note, though, there are times when they need to be charged twice or even 10 times.
* For maintenance purposes, charge the battery during the night once a week.
* Ensure that you buy a real new Lithium Ion battery. It may be that it has been stuck on the shelf for a long time and has degraded. You can check the date on the battery or on its packaging to help you know whether it is new. This is your only way of knowing if it is fresh thereby give you an outstanding performance.

How is power generated by a battery?

A battery changes chemical power into electrical power. By a series of procedures that happened before the electrical power was created, the batteries were able to produce electrochemical power. With the use of a charger, electricity is set up into the battery. Acting as a medium of thrusting the electrons, the charger helps to propel the electrons into the chemical lithium. This charging procedure entails embolism in order for the electrons to unite with the other molecules in the diminutive areas of the lithium amid the fossilized planes of the lithium. Basically, the electrons ionized the lithium which fills the crystal surfaces to the peak so that they are pushed into an electrical surge. Lithium is actually refilled through embolism although the ionization outcome is the definitive exhaustion of the responsive characteristics of the lithium.

Lithium is a good element for batteries because of its being an extremely responsive metal. There is an extremely elevated electrochemical capability in lithium.

The electrochemical capability in a number of lithium-based cells is 5 times more than the same-size lead-acid unit or cell and is 3 times more than an alkaline battery. Malleable and pliant, lithium can fit in rigid compositions, thus is ideal for tiny cell designs like laptops, cameras, PDAs and the like.

The Kind of Lithium Cell Utilized in a Laptop Computer

There is an array of lithium-based battery cells and which are of high-quality. Let us take the case of the 18650, a lithium-based cell battery that is recommended for laptops and is commercially known in the computer world. A lot of manufacturers are producing the 18650 battery even consisting of big businesses such as Sony, Panasonic, Sanyo, Samsung and LG.

The 18650 is a 3.6 tubular Lithium ion cell, does not have any memory result (differentiate amid the digital memory) and has a long-lasting life span compared with the NiMH battery cells. The former also has elevated force solidity and is not heavy. It is actually ideal for structuring the batteries for laptop computers and other movable power gadgets.
Following are the technical designs of an 18650 battery cell:

* 3.7 volts average nominal voltage. This means that the range of the voltage relies on the battery’s number of cells.
* A 2200 mAh nominal capacity. The solidity of a lithium-based cell battery is questionable if its nominal capacity is more than 2200 mAh.
* An upper limit charging current of 2.4 Amps
* An upper limit discharging current of 4.6 Amps
* A dimension of 18.3 mm by 64.9 mm
* Weight of 46.5 g
* An internal impedance ratio of fewer or equivalent to 90 ohms
* The cycle efficiency must be 80% of its original capability at 300 sets

As indicated by the reader, the Toshiba Satellite M105-S3041 Laptop battery’s rate is 10.8 volts with a capability of 8800mAh.

I mentioned above that 3.7 volts is the average nominal voltage. Some producers use 3.6 voltage while other manufacturers use 3.7. Laptop batteries that have 10.8 volts use 3.6 volts for its nominal voltage rating. So breaking up 10.8 volts by 3.6 volts will result to 3; therefore there are 3 cells in a chain. For an 8800mAh capacity, we divide it with the nominal capacity which is 2200 mAh. Hence, 8800 mAh divided by 2200 mAh will result to 4.

So for the above specifications of a Toshiba Laptop with a 10.8 volts and an 8800mAh rating, we have 3 cells in a chain. We then multiply it by 4 cells in parallel giving us a total of 12 cells.

We owe the idea of the Lithium ion battery from M.S. Whittingham, a product of the Binghamton University in Exxon. It was in the 70s when Whittingham developed a battery that was powered by titanium sulfide and lithium. The metallic lithium worked well inasmuch as the energy was involved; nevertheless definite security matters and issues were raised. Because of these, the battery was not allowed to be used commercially.

In view of this, a few more researches were conducted through the intercalation method utilizing the electrochemical characteristics of lithium along with graphite. This was performed by Rachid Yazami in 1980, who at that time was connected with the Grenoble Institute of Technology and the French National Center for Scientific Research. After a year or two, Yazami publicized the results of his research, that the embolism of lithium in graphite is a mercurial effect and therefore can be utilized in the production of lithium batteries that can be revived. However, utilizing the lithium metal was constrained and so another type of lithium that has lithium ions was employed.

And so it continued up to the time when the primary lithium ion battery by Sony was sold commercially. Soon a lot of people took on with the idea of reviving or rechargeable batteries. You might have noticed that most of the electronic gadgets are being powered by batteries that can be revived. The units functioned on the belief of tiered oxide trimming in chemistry and lithium cobalt oxide is utilized as an alternate of the lithium metal which was utilized beforehand. In conjunction to the necessity of developing commercial and secure substitutes to the lithium cobalt oxide, further studies were conducted. From these studies came the lithium iron phosphate and a lot more phosphor-olivines were built up by John Goodenough and Akshaya Padhi in 1996. These two worked together and built ways to expand the technology of lithium battery.

The reasons for the clamor to further build up this battery are permanence, security, price and efficiency. The lithium ion batteries have earned the acceptance of consumers for their being safe to use and enduring resilience plus consistency in being efficient. For dependable repairs, these batteries were fitted to movable gadgets such as laptops and power tools. Lithium batteries are unwavering and very efficient and for that reason, some businesses are utilizing them as their source of energy. As a matter of fact, electric automobiles use them. MIT researcher, Yet-Ming Chiang has made more enhancements to the lithium battery in 2004. By utilizing small atoms of iron phosphate (about 100 nm) in the lithium battery, he was able to enhance the battery’s efficiency a whole lot better as well as giving its ability additional boost.

As a rule of thumb, it would be best to not keep the netbook turned on when such is not in use. Having the netbook in sleep mode will prolong the battery life since it utilizes minimal power as compared to having it turned on the whole time. In addition, the process of sleep mode and activating the netbook only takes a short period of time; roughly ten to twenty seconds.  Hence, there is no need to save one’s work continuously which takes a lot of power. The netbook should be configured this way when the lid is closed to take full advantage of the function; with five to ten minutes of sleep mode, battery life can be extended significantly.

Being online the whole time significantly drains the battery; one should only be online when the need arises. Having the wireless wifi adapter on uses up battery more, it would be a waste to have this function on especially when there are no available hotspots. This could extend the battery life from at least thirty more minutes to a full hour.

Considering the netbook processor, the Intel Atom processor was devised in such a way that it can increase productivity while still maintaining efficiency. On some note, running programs that are not in use will waste battery more.  As an example, using one online messenger that can connect to all IM networks is a better alternative rather than using three IM applications.

Take advantage when there is a change to use AC power rather than the battery. In this case, that battery can be topped up immediately and the battery will be in full charge when AC power is not used. There is need to worry about over charging since battery technology nowadays are configured in such a way that it stops charging when it is full.

Laptop peripherals such as 3g modems, mouse, Bluetooth, webcam and infrared are culprits for excessive battery consumption. Turn these devices off when not in use. All in all, by doing these battery saving tasks; it will surely increase battery life and productivity in netbooks. Hence, there is no need to continuously plug the netbook every now and then.