Samsung just might have the holy grail of batteries on their hands. The company, in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has figured out a way to make batteries last 'indefinitely'.

How do they perform magical feat, you ask? Batteries usually use a liquid as the electrolyte - the solution through which electricity is conducted - but Samsung and MIT believe that replacing this with a solid could increase the life of a battery exponentially.

Usually, when a battery is charged, it gradually starts degrading and this is why you need replace the battery in most electronics after a few years. By changing the electrolyte to a solid, however, this degradation is stemmed and would allow the battery to potentially undergo "hundreds of thousands of cycles" of recharging and discharging.

Not only that, but MIT also claims that the discovery “solves most of the remaining issues in battery lifetime, safety, and cost," and argues that it's a "game changer". These batteries would also not catch fire because, as MIT so elegantly puts it,

You could throw it against the wall, drive a nail through it. There’s nothing there to burn

Samsung has been working incessantly on improving battery tech for the past few years and, with this innovation, it might just have found the holy grail.

Via: The Korea Times |Battery Image via Shutterstock