Eli5: Why do charged electronics (Game controllers, eReaders,) lose their charge when they’re not being used?
In: 1469
I do not know if this explains for *all* electronics discharge, but just last year a team of Canadians found [why many batteries may be self-discharging](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/battery-power-laptop-phone-research-dalhousie-university-1.6724175).
It turns out that batteries have been frequently constructed using tape that’s made with polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic. This plastic degrades over time (and with heat) releasing a molecule that ends up shuttling electrons between the positive and negative electrodes, thereby discharging them!
This issue can be resolved by switching to a slightly more expensive, but also more stable, plastic used in the tape.
From the article:
> “A lot of the companies made clear that this is very relevant to them,” Metzger said. “They want to make changes to these components in their battery cells because, of course, they want to avoid self-discharge.”
Starting this year we just might find that the problem of self-discharging batteries (from newly produced batteries) has greatly improved.
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