Ever since the Note 7 scandal hit the mass media, a lot of attention has been brought to the dangers of high-capacity lithium-ion batteries in our everyday electronics. While many attempts have been made to prevent fires in phones and electronics from breaking out, the latest research coming out of Stanford University seems to be the most promising.

They’ve decided to put a flame retardant called triphenyl phosphate in a tiny sheath of plastic fibres into the battery’s electrolyte material. The electrolytes, being the source of battery fires in many cases, are kept out of contact with the triphenyl phosphate up until the plastic fibres melt at 160° Celsius.

This technique not only prevents fires, but stops the device from being damaged. Users will just have to replace the battery when this sort of thing happens and save themselves a lot of money.