Next time you're worried your smartphone's going to let you down in the middle of the day or you'll have to bring with you an array of chargers for a two-day business trip, don't despair — Italian researchers have got your back.

At the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), a group of local scientists has just produced a new kind of lithium-ion battery that exceeds current batteries' efficiency by 25 percent. The extra battery life is achieved by exploiting the high electrical conductivity of graphene — used for the battery's anode — at an unprecedented scale.

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