Throw Out Your Chargers. Smartphones Could Soon Run Forever.

Smartphones have the ability to make us more efficient, more knowledgeable and more connected, but also more anxious—as anyone who has watched their battery dwindle or die will know.

Researchers now hope to make this modern-day frustration a thing of the past, after developing a new technology that could one day be integrated into smartphones, allowing them to charge themselves.

The self-charging lithium-ion battery concept, presented in the journal Nature Communications earlier this month, was created by scientists at McGill University and the Hydro-Quebec's research institute.

"With smartphones now, you can basically carry your whole office in that device. They are loaded with all sorts of applications so you need a lot of power to use it everyday and sometimes, you don't have access to a plug to recharge," Professor George Demopoulos, chair of Mining and Materials Engineering at McGill University, said in a press release.

The technology involves harvesting and storing light energy by adding a photosensitive dye to the cathode—the part of the smartphone through which power is transferred from the grid.

The next step before this concept can be incorporated into devices is to develop a suitable anode—the battery terminal that stores and releases a device's energy. If successful, they will have built the world's first self-charging lithium-ion battery.

"We have done half of the job," said Demopoulos. "We know that we can design the electrode that absorbs light. This grant will give us the opportunity to bridge the gap and demonstrate this new concept of a light-chargeable battery is possible."

It will take "a few years" to complete the second phase of the project, which Demopoulos hopes will lead to the passive form of charging eventually being integrated into smartphones and other portable devices.