Sony in damage control after worldwide battery recall

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 03 October 2006 20:02

IT Industry - Strategy

Sony has been literally playing with fire ever since that fateful day in November 2005 when a Dell laptop publicly burst into flames in one of the most commercially damaging displays of pyrotechnics on record.

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According to Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun, Sony learned that its battery was involved in the incident in December last year but failed to take widespread action.

Sony Lithium Ion batteries are popular with portable computing and electronics companies because of their abundant storage capabilities. To achieve the level of storage, however, the Sony batteries use Cobalt Oxide as the material for the positive electrode (cathode), which can become unstable in the case of a fault in the manufacturing process that leads to an internal short.

If an internal short occurs, this can trigger a process known as thermal runaway, which in turn leads to flaimg notebooks.

In the case of Dell and later, Apple and Lenovo-IBM notebook computers, a fault in the manufacturing process is exactly what has occurred. 
Tiny metal particles, inadvertently introduced during the manufacturing process had perforated the thin foil that separates the positive and negative electrodes of the batteries causing a short.

Sony apparently knew that its batteries were suspect since the initial Dell incident and is now being pilloried by the Japanese and world press for failing to act sooner to look into the problem with other customers using the same batteries.