A team of researchers at UCLA is working to develop a tiny version of lithium-ion batteries, which is the battery type often found in laptops, cellphones, and iPods. Although the research is in its infancy, this technology could one day power miniature electronic devices.
 
"We're trying to achieve the same power densities, the same energy densities as traditional lithium ion batteries, but we need to make the footprint much smaller," says Jane Chang, a UCLA engineer involved in the project.
 
Who knows, maybe the batteries could be used in the microbots we learned about earlier this week. —Lawrence Lloyd