People take batteries for granted, but they shouldn't. All kinds of technological advances hinge on developing smaller and more powerful mobile energy sources. Researchers at Harvard University and the University of Illinois are reporting just such a creation, one that happens to be no bigger than a grain of sand. These tiny but powerful lithium-ion batteries raise the prospect of a new generation of medical and other devices that can go where traditional hulking batteries can't. (click below to read more)
Many devices already derive too much of their weight and bulk from batteries. But with a tiny battery, implantable sensors might, for example, send reports from inside the body while being recharged by the beating of a human heart. In the Harvard-Illinois research, tiny wasn't even the whole point. Researchers made these new batteries by spitting them from a custom 3-D printer using special electrochemical inks. Jennifer Lewis, a materials scientist at Harvard, says these batteries can store more energy because 3-D printing enables the stacking of electrodes in greater volume than the thin-film methods now used to make microbatteries. And, Dr. Lewis says, 3-D-printed batteries can deliver more power because the printing process allows the anode and cathode—the alpha and omega of any battery, shuttling ions and electrons between them—to be placed closer together. That raises the prospect of, say, hearing aids with rechargeable batteries molded right into the body of the device. Or smartphones with batteries woven into every spare millimeter. Or robotic insects covered with battery material and photovoltaic cells, so they can hover untethered while drawing on solar power. The implication is that someday practically anything can be made to store and discharge energy, as long as someone can figure out how to have a printer (directed by a computer) extrude layers of functional materials with great precision. Who says printing is dead? On the contrary, it's about to become electrifying.
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