The Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has created a new variety of lithium-ion battery that can store at least twice the amount of energy found in your conventional smartphone or laptop battery. Unlike some other battery advances that won't see the light of day for years to come (if at all), this energy storage breakthrough could actually find its way into commercial devices fairly soon. As is fairly normal nowadays, nanotech is the magic ingredient; nanostructured silicon sponges to be exact.