Apple to improve battery life with ‘jelly rolls’

Whether you like The Macbook range of computers or not, very few will argue that Apple have been at the forefront of pushing battery life in recent years. This is set to continue as they have a new concept for battery improvements with ‘jelly rolls' all contained within a single pouch.

AppleInsider have published information on the topic saying “Apple is now looking to expand on the jelly roll design, according to a new patent application discovered this week by AppleInsider. The filing, dubbed “Battery with Multiple Jelly Rolls in a Single Pouch,” aims to improve the existing lithium batteries found in most electronic devices, including the iPhone, iPad and portable Macs.”

Jelly Roll technology is also known as ‘Swiss Rolls' and they are found in cylindrical, rechargeable batteries.

In this design, an anode material is laid down, a separator is applied, and a cathode material is laid down. This is then rolled up and inserted into a hollow cylinder. The battery is then sealed and an optional button top is applied if the battery is intended to replace a AAA/AA/C/D alkaline battery.

AppleInsider add “A lithium-polymer battery can achieve a packaging efficiency of between 90 percent and 95 percent if a jelly roll is enclosed in a foil pouch. Multiple pouches can be placed side by side in order to form a battery.

But to further improve the efficiency of batteries, making them smaller and even more efficient, Apple has proposed a new kind of battery cell with a set of jelly rolls found in a foil pouch, rather than just one.”

The patent application says “The use and placement of multiple jelly rolls of different lengths and thicknesses within a pouch may allow the creation of a custom battery cell that maximizes the use of free space within a portable electronic device and provides greater capacity, packing efficiency, and/or voltage than battery cells that contain only one jelly roll per pouch.

Along the same lines, jelly rolls of various thicknesses and lengths may be sealed in a pouch to create an asymmetric battery cell that fits around other components (e.g., processors, printed circuit boards (PCBs), memory, storage, etc.) inside the enclosure of a mobile phone”

Kitguru says: We need battery improvements, the technology is lagging behind other hardware. Maybe in the future we can expect multiple day battery life, even from powerful laptop systems.

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