I have read that it is possible to revive a dead Li-ion battery by putting it in the freezer for three to seven days, then letting it get back to room temperature.
Can this process work, and if so, how does it work?
Notes:
Somehow the opposite, i.e. heating (cooking) the battery, is more intuitive to me. After all, in the dead battery, there is "something stuck" (crystallized?), and heat could break that. But I don't know if it's a good idea to try that at home. ;-)
I also found that hitting a Li-ion battery, against a table, for example, has some effect. At the moment, I have a battery in an IBM ThinkPad T41 laptop that, although still working, is on it's way to death. When it runs flat and I connect the laptop to mains, then the battery is not detected properly (battery status LED continues blinking orange). So, I take it out, hit it, put it back in, and the problem is solved (LED constantly orange). Also, I have the impression that hitting gives some extra charge. It could be all just a coincidence, of course.
I am asking in part for a friend whose laptop battery has been dead, I believe, already for some weeks or months. He said that the battery is not that old, but he has let it run flat in cold weather (up in the mountains). Anyhow, whether the process works for this particular battery should not influence my decision on accepting an answer. I am primarily interested in understanding a little bit more about battery chemistry, just to broaden my general knowledge.