Silver Oxide Battery Technology

"Silver Oxide" is short for Zinc-Silver-Oxide. Although technically feasible in a variety of form factors, current Silver Oxide batteries tend to be button or coin cells. Their typical use is in watches, calculators, miniature remote controls and other electronic devices.

Silver Oxide technology is well suited to these applications because:

• The chemicals used store approximately 50% more energy for each unit of volume than an alkaline cell. This permits the development of compact batteries.
• The voltage stays close to constant over the discharge life of the battery, permitting more delicate equipment to be powered correctly.
• The storage life of Silver Oxide batteries typically extends to four years or more, making it suitable also e.g. for memory backup applications.

Some devices can be fitted with either Alkaline or Silver Oxide batteries. As an example, for the HP-12C these would be the Alkaline LR44 or the Silver Oxide 357. They both have the same dimensions, but with Silver Oxide batteries, the calculator will run several times longer.

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