Imagine not watching just one DVD on a transatlantic flight, but three full-length movies with plenty of juice left after you doze off.

That's the tantalizing picture of the near future researchers at Stanford painted with a study published in Nature Nanotechnology.

See, silicon has the potential to outperform carbon used in the anodes of lithium-ion batteries. The problem is that silicon has proven way too fragile.

Until now.

Chemist Yi Cui and his team grew silicon nanowires that do not disintegrate as they absorb and release lithium. Stanford News Service explains:

Silicon placed in a battery swells as it absorbs positively charged lithium atoms during charging, then shrinks during use (i.e., when playing your iPod) as the lithium is drawn out of the silicon. This expand/shrink cycle typically causes the silicon (often in the form of particles or a thin film) to pulverize, degrading the performance of the battery.

Cui's battery gets around this problem with nanotechnology. The lithium is stored in a forest of tiny silicon nanowires, each with a diameter one-thousandth the thickness of a sheet of paper. The nanowires inflate four times their normal size as they soak up lithium. But, unlike other silicon shapes, they do not fracture.

A patent application has been filed. Let's hope we start seeing this battery technology soon.