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Plastic Batteries Coming Soon?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the polymer-power dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "Engineers at Brown University have built a prototype of a hybrid plastic battery that uses a conductive polymer. The system, which marries the power of a capacitor with the storage capacity of a battery, can store and deliver power efficiently. For example, during performance testing, 'it delivered more than 100 times the power of a standard alkaline battery.' Still, it's unlikely that such a device can appear on the market before several years."

2 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. Average time-to-market? by linkedlinked · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How long, on average, does it take for a new technology (especially battery related) to reach the market, after an announcement like this?

    I ask, because I've been reading slashdot for over 4 years, and it seems like there's a healthy number of "revolutionary power supply" breakthroughs, or "batteries that will change your life (for cheap!)," and today, my new laptop still dies after an hour and a half.

    I don't mean to be a cynic, but it really feels like these ideas never make it out of the lab.

  2. Roland the Plogger again by Animats · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ah, Roland the Plogger again.

    First, this isn't about a battery with a 100x higher energy density. That would be a major breakthrough. It's about one with a high peak power, for surge applications. That's a specialty item.

    It's also been done. Flat batteries with high peak-power outputs were invented over 25 years ago at Polaroid, for the PolaPulse battery. One of those was in every Polaroid film pack for years. It could put out 15 amps for a brief period, providing plenty of power to run the camera mechanism. (Since, in that camera, the battery had to power the mechanism that squeezed the film between the development rollers, substantial power was required for about one second.) The battery chemistry wasn't rechargeable, although there's no reason a rechargeable chemistry couldn't have been put in that packaging.

    PolaPulse batteries are still available, and turn up now and then when a flat battery with a high peak current is needed. One amusing use of PolaPulse batteries is StartMeUp, which is a pocket-sized unit with six PolaPulse batteries used to restart a car.

    Several other manufacturers claim to make flat batteries, some of which are rechargeable. However, none of the manufacturers mentioned in that article actually seem to be shipping product.