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Scientists Discover Way to Send Information into Black Holes Without Using Energy

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Scientists Finally Discover What Actually Happens Inside A Lithium Battery When It Short-circuits

Lithium-ion batteries have transformed modern technology, powering smartphones, laptops, electric vehicles, energy-storage systems and many other devices. Yet behind their impressive performance lies a serious safety challenge: internal short circuits.

An internal short circuit (ISC) occurs when electrical contact is unintentionally created between parts of a battery that are normally separated. Because the event happens inside the cell, it can be extremely difficult to detect or stop. In severe cases, the resulting heat can trigger thermal runaway, a rapid chain reaction that may lead to smoke, fire and even violent battery failure.

A research team led by Shanhai Ge has now provided important insights into one of the most dangerous forms of battery failure: single-layer internal shorting in multilayer batteries. Their work also raises important questions about the safety of next-generation lithium-metal and all-solid-state batteries.

Why Internal Short Circuits Are So Dangerous

A rechargeable battery contains several layers of materials, including electrodes and an electrolyte. These layers are carefully designed to remain electrically separated while allowing ions to move between them.

If this separation is damaged, the positive and negative sides can come into direct contact. A large amount of electrical current can then flow through a very small region.

That concentrated current generates intense local heating.

The resulting heat can cause further chemical reactions inside the cell. These reactions produce even more heat, potentially creating a self-accelerating process known as thermal runaway.

Among the different possible battery failures, single-layer internal shorting is widely regarded as a particularly severe scenario. In a multilayer battery, a short involving even one internal layer can generate enough heat to affect surrounding layers and initiate a much larger failure.

Understanding exactly when smoke and fire begin is therefore essential for improving battery safety.

A More Reproducible Way to Study Battery Fires

One major challenge in battery-safety research is reproducibility.

Internal short circuits can occur in different ways and under different conditions. Small variations in the location, resistance and electrical current of the short can produce very different outcomes.

The research team developed a method that allows scientists to more reliably study the onset of smoke and fire during internal short-circuit events.

The approach was applied not only to conventional lithium-ion batteries (LiBs), but also to anode-free batteries and lithium-metal batteries (LMBs).

This comparison is particularly important because lithium-metal technology is being investigated as a promising route toward batteries with higher energy density than today's conventional lithium-ion cells.

However, the study reveals that higher energy density may come with additional safety challenges.

Lithium-Metal Batteries Can React Extremely Quickly

One of the most striking findings is the behavior of lithium-metal batteries during internal shorting.

According to the researchers, LMBs—whether they contain liquid electrolytes or not—can be significantly more dangerous during an internal short circuit than conventional lithium-ion batteries.

In their experiments, lithium-metal batteries could ignite within approximately 1–3 seconds after internal shorting.

That extremely short time window is important.

A battery that begins producing dangerous heat within seconds provides very little time for detection, cooling or intervention. In practical applications containing many battery cells, such rapid failure could potentially create additional challenges for thermal-management and protection systems.

The researchers also observed similar or even greater combustion heat release compared with lithium-ion batteries under the investigated conditions.

This does not mean that every lithium-metal battery will inevitably catch fire. Battery safety depends on many factors, including cell design, materials, state of charge, temperature, mechanical conditions and the nature of the short circuit.

However, the findings demonstrate that lithium-metal chemistry deserves particularly careful safety evaluation.

What Does This Mean for Solid-State Batteries?

All-solid-state batteries (ASSBs) are often discussed as a potential solution to some of the safety limitations associated with conventional batteries.

Instead of a liquid electrolyte, these batteries use a solid electrolyte. Removing flammable liquid components could potentially reduce certain fire risks.

But the study highlights an important point: replacing the liquid electrolyte with a solid electrolyte does not automatically eliminate the possibility of dangerous internal-short-circuit behavior.

The researchers' observations indicate that lithium-metal batteries can remain highly reactive during internal shorting even without a liquid electrolyte.

This has direct implications for the development of all-solid-state batteries containing lithium-metal anodes.

The findings suggest that researchers need to examine not only whether a solid electrolyte is nonflammable, but also what happens when the battery experiences a severe electrical short.

In other words, battery safety must be evaluated under realistic failure conditions—not just during normal operation.

A Critical Current Threshold

Another important discovery concerns the electrical current flowing through the internal short.

The researchers found evidence of a threshold short-circuit current associated with fire initiation in lithium-metal batteries.

Below this threshold, a short may not necessarily produce the same fire behavior. Above it, the conditions can become sufficient to trigger ignition.

This helps explain why seemingly similar internal-short experiments can sometimes produce dramatically different results.

The precise control of short-circuit current is therefore essential when researchers attempt to reproduce battery-failure experiments.

For battery scientists, this is more than an experimental detail. It provides a way to better understand the physical conditions that separate relatively limited heating from rapid fire development.

Oxygen Plays a Surprising Role

Perhaps one of the most significant aspects of the research is its investigation of oxygen.

Fire is often associated primarily with flammable battery materials and electrolytes. However, the researchers' observations reveal that oxygen can have a profound influence on the formation of smoke and fire during internal shorting.

This is particularly important for next-generation battery design.

Even if a battery uses a solid, less-flammable electrolyte, other components and chemical reactions may still contribute to combustion under extreme conditions.

Understanding where the oxygen comes from, how it participates in reactions and how it influences heat release could therefore help researchers design safer battery architectures.

The findings point toward a broader approach to safety: instead of simply replacing flammable materials, scientists must understand the complete chemical and physical pathway leading from an internal short to ignition.

Why This Research Matters for Future Batteries

The battery industry is rapidly moving toward higher energy densities. Lithium-metal anodes are attractive because they can potentially store more energy than conventional graphite-based anodes.

At the same time, solid-state battery technology is being developed for applications ranging from electric vehicles to advanced energy storage.

But increasing energy density also makes failure analysis increasingly important.

The study by Shanhai Ge and colleagues provides a valuable warning: a battery's behavior under normal operation does not tell the whole safety story.

A next-generation battery may perform exceptionally well during charging and discharging but still present serious hazards if an internal short circuit occurs.

Future battery designs will therefore need safety strategies that address internal shorting, rapid heat generation, oxygen involvement and ignition—not simply electrolyte flammability.

The Bigger Picture

The most important message from this research is not that lithium-metal or solid-state batteries are inherently unsafe. Rather, it is that their safety must be carefully demonstrated under extreme failure conditions.

The ability to reproduce internal short circuits and accurately identify the conditions that trigger smoke and fire gives researchers a powerful tool for doing exactly that.

As batteries become more powerful and energy-dense, understanding their failure mechanisms will be just as important as improving their capacity, charging speed and lifetime.

The path toward safer batteries may ultimately depend on studying what happens during the few seconds when everything goes wrong—and designing the battery so that those seconds never turn into a fire.

Reference: Shanhai Ge, Tatsuro Sasaki, Nitesh Gupta, Kaiqiang Qin, Ryan S. Longchamps, Koichiro Aotani, Yuichi Aihara, Chao-Yang Wang; Quantification of Lithium Battery Fires in Internal Short Circuit. ACS Energy Lett. 13 December 2024; 9 (12): 5747–5755. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsenergylett.4c02564

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