Battery life is the number one thing limiting the expansion of the portable lifestyle - even with the advances in chemical battery energy storage, mobile devices, especially ones that combine a few different functions together, have a pretty limited battery life. Scientists have been working on the problem for a while, but there's a new solution that may hit the streets in the next three to five years that's not only more powerful than current lithium batteries, but is easier to charge and completely Earth-friendly: the sugar battery. Chemists at St. Louis University in Missouri developed the battery, which claims to be the longest lasting of any sugar-based battery, can run on anything from tree sap to flat soda, produces only water as a by-product and is made entirely of environmentally-friendly materials. Dr. Shelly Minteer, who headed up the team that developed the battery, thinks it will be able to replace lithium batteries, which currently power things like cell phones, digital cameras and system clocks in computers.

Via DailyTech