Australia's national science body teamed up with a Japanese chemical manufacturer to work on the next-generation lithium battery technologies for portable electronic devices, drones and automotive vehicles.

The collaboration between the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) and Piotrek will also address lithium battery fires.

Researchers from both organizations will use CSIRO's polymer technology and Piotrek's Ion Conducting Polymers (ICP) to develop Solid Polymer Electrolytes (SPEs) for lithium batteries.

"This partnership will help Piotrek make our batteries safer and more efficient, and with our industry reach, we will get our advanced batteries to the market faster," Ihei Sada, Piotrek's general manager, said in a CSIRO media release on Thursday.

"Together we will develop the world's safest, longer life solid state high energy battery."

Solid state lithium batteries use a lithium metal anode and have twice as much energy capacity as current ones.

They also do not contain the volatile liquids that are responsible for battery fires.

Adam Best, CSIRO Battery Research Leader, said that solid state battery-enabled devices could be on the market by 2025.

"Our Reversible Addition Fragmentation chain Transfer (RAFT) technology allows us to tune our SPEs' properties to expand their versatility for different types of batteries and fuel cells, and will also significantly reduce the cost of device assembly and manufacture," he said.

(Top image via VCG)