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Microbatteries Built on a Bed of Nails
nadamsieee writes "The good folks at IEEE Spectrum have a news brief about a newly invented method of creating microbatteries using an electrode that looks like a bed of nails. The method was created by a team led by Prof. Marc Madou of UC Irvine. IEEE Spectrum notes that 'according to the researchers, a battery using such an electrode can generate 78 percent more power than a stacked-plate microbattery of the same volume.'"
...they're a bunch of fakirs.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
5 years till this is on the market.
blah, blah, blah
This is the same tech in all modern batteries. Increase surface area and you get more reaction. No different to heatsinks, it's been known for years.
Nothing to see here, Move along.
RST
This looks like a high tech version of the ancient carbon cell battery. I would hope that this design can be made rechargeable, I wouldn't want to replace a battery made with a super expensive nanotube component, EVER. And no, I'm not thinking MP3 player, I'm thinking sensors that you don't want to have to visit regulary.
Bacardi + slashdot = negative karma.
But does it scale?
At what point does this all fail? This might be great if you want to power an ant sized object, but what are the odds we'll see it in anything greater than the size of a pacemaker.
And, of course, if the process is similar to a chip, can we expect to buy it in units of 1000 for $300 each?
The more you know, the more you know you don't know.
That sounds impressive, how impressive is it? Can it be made rechargable? Can it be stacked to be a full cubic meter's worth? How many Kilo amphours would such a battery yield? I guess it is too early to tell these things.
I think the voltage-switching aspect of these batteries is the really important part. If the manufacturing process were streamlined, this would have some interesting applications.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
I'd sell a body part to be able to get a "battery" that was somwhere between a capacitor and battery in features. Supercapacitors are getting closer, but even 10F is no where near a small battery in capacity.
I'm working on a hybrid vehicle, and finding a way to make good use of the regenerative braking power is a real challenge. Lead acids can only take a charge so fast, usually less than 0.1 of the power available during braking, unless you completely oversize the battery banks.
I want something with a very low charge impedance that can basically lock the shaft of the motor/generator, if need be.. completely eliminating friction brakes.
This would have bigger applications... Imagine charging your laptop in 10 minutes, then running for 6 hours.
So these advances in power density and discharge impedance are good, but tangential to what I think will be the real killer app, a super low charging impedance battery.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Who cares? The only thing you need those batteries for is either a cheap watch or the motherboard batteries which have never run out before the computer became obsolete. Aren't fuel cells on the verge of being available for consumers? Where's Toshiba with their fuel cell laptop?!
These batteries may be well and truly needed in a couple of years for mobile devices. Moore's law, ubiquitous connectivity and the development of data services and content will make phones a platform that need more power from the same amount of weight.
Have you looked at the idea of fuel cells? Email me and we can chat about other things relevant to this thread.
The previous has been a secret message to my comrades.
If only we had a way to harness the energy generated by the spontaneous knee-jerk naysaying of Slashdot posters, our energy needs would be met forever.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
It's "Pillars of Power" NOT a bed of nails! RTFA! man RTFA!
You get amp-hours based on the quantity of reactants that you have. What these guys have created is a way to discharge a small battery more quickly.
OK so sometimes you do need a battery with a low internal resistance. Trying to use this for something like a hearing aid wouldn't help very much. If you could make a smaller battery, then it wouldn't last as long.
...this is how you make a bed of nails!
I think it's the nature of high IQ nerdom. You tend to think the "other guy" is an idiot, because a lot of times they are. Makes you pretty egocentric I guess, even when the other guy is SMARTER than you or has pulled off something impressive.. Hecktapay when you got a large room fulla them...in meat space or cyberspace... ....had a sales job once, selling a new and improved technical product. Doesn't matter what it was now, what I noticed though was when I was selling to joe blow, it was normal,questions answers, sold some, sometimes didn't, but it was a normal deal. When I tried to sell to engineers they argued constantly about it, said they could do it cheaper/better/faster and yada yada yada. It was an automatic reaction they had, just the way their minds worked. Didn't matter to them, it is hard coded DNA or something. I would ask them why they didn't do it then (zero of them had ever made anything like it), and why did they bother making an appointment, especially when they knew the ballpark figures up front. they would just sputter then, pretty funny. Serious PITA sometimes. Ya, it was bad salesmanship on my part, didn't care, I made enough sales and was raking in the dough at the time. It was argumentive debate sport for me with them guys, nerd to nerd...
No, I don't like sales.. don't do it anymore....I did sell a few units to engineers, but I studiously avoided them after the first few times.
This is the same tech in all modern batteries. Increase surface area and you get more reaction. No different to heatsinks, it's been known for years.
But surface-area boosts in traditional batteries have been mainly a matter of putting micropores in plates, not changing from a plate geometry to posts.
It might be worthwhile to try the post approach in a "conventional" battery at macroscopic sizes. It might produce a significant improvement (though not as extreme as when the posts are nanoscopic).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
but it has no effect on the total energy output, so it lets you build devices that drain batteries even faster. Just what we need.
An NiMH cell can already handle a load of 2C quite easily. Do we really need more? If that's not enough power, it's time to move to a larger cell. What good is a PDA/Cellphone/Camera that only lasts for 15 minutes on a charge even if it is 10% smaller than the old model?
Jason
ProfQuotes
Hell yeah!
That would take care of the source of a lot of traffic jams.
The only problem is that all those fools will be re-dialing leading to more accidents.
I know there is not a causal link between cell phone dialing and accidents, but tell that to the person that ran a red light and nearly killed my wife and kid....
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
...in a microbattery she makes me wait?
Err... no.
You wouldn't bend the pins in the upper left corner, like they have. Note the pin located at (7,-1). That's going to be a B#*%^ to straighten without snapping it off.
Something tells me that's a spent battery though, since there's minor damage to many of the pins.
Look behind you...
Step 1: Take a photograph of a CPU's pins and pretend it's some exciting new technology
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit!
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
These guys got guts!
(Hint: think).
I want my laptop to be lighter, and the batter is one of its heaviest parts.
In a large format modern laptop, there's a fair amount of volume that could be stuffed with these micro-batteries.
The article says these batteries pump out 78% more "power" per volume, but what about power per mass ratio? In the laptop application, this matters most.