Battery technology: A whiff of brimstone

BUILD a better battery, to paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the world will beat a path to your door. For consumer goods, from computers to cars, "better" means "better than lithium-ion". And several groups of engineers think they have one: it is based on lithium and sulphur.A lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery works by shuttling the eponymous ions, which are positively charged, through an electrolyte that links two electrodes, one made of carbon and the other of a substance containing a heavy metal...