Now, a battery that's made out of wood

A team of researchers have made a tiny, long-lasting, environmental-friendly battery made of a sliver of wood coated with tin.

A team of researchers have made a tiny, long-lasting, environmental-friendly battery made of a sliver of wood coated with tin.

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But don't try it at home yet - the components in the battery tested by scientists at the University of Maryland are a thousand times thinner than a piece of paper.

Sodium doesn't store energy as efficiently as lithium, so you won't see this battery in your cell phone - instead, its low cost and common materials would make it ideal to store huge amounts of energy at once, such as solar energy at a power plant.

Existing batteries are often created on stiff bases, which are too brittle to withstand the swelling and shrinking that happens as electrons are stored in and used up from the battery.

Liangbing Hu, Teng Li and their team found that wood fibers are supple enough to let their sodium-ion battery last more than 400 charging cycles.