Slashdot Mirror
Nanotech Ink Turns Paper Into a Low-Cost Battery
jangel writes "Stanford University researchers have demonstrated a way to turn ordinary paper into a battery, which may be crumpled or pressed into any form. It's said the technology promises greater durability, higher efficiency, and faster energy transfer than traditional batteries. The technique uses special ink made of carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires. Thanks to the small diameters of these materials, the ink sticks strongly to the fibrous paper, allowing the battery to be extremely durable. The paper battery could last through 40,000 charge-discharge cycles — at least an order of magnitude more than lithium batteries. According to the researchers, the paper batteries will be low-cost, may be crumpled or folded, and can even be soaked in acidic or basic solutions, yet their performance does not degrade. 'We just haven't tested what happens when you burn it,' one of the researchers quipped." This is the same Stanford research team, lead by Yi Cui, whose work with nanotechnology for battery applications we have discussed before. We've also delved into alternate routes to the holy grail of the ultra-thin battery.
What's the ink made of? Oil? If so: never mind.
How fast an you charge it without it bursting into flames?
If it can charge faster and has equal power density to LiON batteries, and the ink isn't made out of oil, and the entire thing can be built outside of a petroleum context, I think we might have a winner...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
These paper based batteries appear to function in a very similar fashion to the algae derived cellulose batteries mentioned on Slashdot a while ago. The paper probably acts as a support just as the algae cellulose particles did in the previously mentioned design.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
How much silver is actually sued in these batteries? Will availability be an issue? Does it work with other conductive materials like copper or aluminum? Intuitively I suspect the problem here will be energy density for the simple reason it is the one thing they did not promise would be awesome. That said with the tesla beating 500km recently these batteries coudl eprform well even if they had half of Li-Ion energy density.
Ink made out of carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires? That will be almost as expensive as inkjet ink.
No, but it will power your Kindle.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
According to the abstract it is 30-47 Wh/kg as compared to 160 Wh/kg for Li-ion. So it is a factor 3 short of Li-Ion. Still not bad for such a new tech. With some optimizations it might actually stand a chance to replace Li-Ion.
Self lighting joints which read out how many drags you have left on a little e-ink burnable screen!
Made completely of cellulose! (and carbon nano-tubes)
No duh. You carry around a jpg of the battery on your phone. When your battery is about to die, you go to a network printer, print off the jpg and replace the new battery.
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beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
It'll wake you up alright.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
What's the power density? If you need a dozen phonebooks worth of paper to store 100wH, never mind...
To power a car, sure. If space is ample, or energy requirements are minimal, then this could be very useful.
What's the ink made of? Oil? If so: never mind.
Where does this come from? If you think we're going to eliminate oil derived products anytime soon, think again. Oil isn't going away as a feedstock for the chemical industry. If your requirement is that nothing is ever tied to petroleum, just give up now. You won't get very far.
AccountKiller
That's comparing apples and oranges though. The value of 30-47 Wh/kg is for a supercapacitor made using the conductive paper, not for a battery. The article itself keeps using the word "battery" (and so does the Stanford release it's based on), but the abstract only offers that "this conductive paper can be used as an excellent lightweight current collector in lithium-ion batteries to replace the existing metallic counterparts."
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
If your requirement is that nothing is ever tied to petroleum, just give up now. You won't get very far.
Won't get very far at a competitive cost anyways...
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
Keep in mind that ultra-thin, printed, "paper" batteries (usually printed on cellulose, or a thin polymer film for added mechanical strength, although paper itself can be done) have been commercially available for a decade -- see Power Paper and Blue Spark Technologies as just two examples.
I don't think Yi Cui is a traditional WASP name.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Won't get very far at a competitive cost today, anyways...
Its about the same as lead-acid
It's good enough to power short-medium range electric cars without the short lifetime of lead acid batteries.
they use carbon and silver. this is like "turning an apple into a battery" when you stick zinc and copper into it.
But blacks have huge penises.
That may not matter to you, but it matters to your ex-girlfriend who left you for the power-forward of her college basketball team. When a man has a huge penis, none of what you wrote matters to the women he is seeing.
The puny white man is nothing compared to the prime specimens of humanity. Blacks were bred since the slave days to be bigger, faster, stronger, and more desirable from an evolutionary standpoint.
Women don't want to hear your babbling about Leonhard Euler or atmospheric wave propagation. They want big, strong, manly men who speak slowly and in deep voices, using as few words as possible.
In the end, his genes will be passed down to the mulatto baby. Not yours, his.
Wrong.
Charles Richard Drew (3 June 1904 – 1 April 1950) was an African American physician and medical researcher. He researched in the field of blood transfusions, developing improved techniques for blood storage, and applied his expert knowledge in developing large-scale blood banks early in World War II, saving thousands of lives of the Allied forces.
They say that "one drop of black blood" makes you black -- therefore we are all black.
In the words of Jesus: "Love ... thy neighbor as thyself." I'm pretty sure he included your dark-skinned -- yet identically red-blooded -- neighbors in that assertion.
As for why Europeans conquered the world, see Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. (Short answer: environmental factors.)
-kgj
If you tie a length of this paper into a Möbius strip, do you get an infinite power source - or just AC?
AT&ROFLMAO
My guess is there will be some particularly nasty smoke when they do get around to testing it by burning.
Thousands of carbon naontubes wafting away contaminating the room, furnishings, clothes, your child's fluffy toys doesn't seem like a good idea.
I sure as heck don't want to be subject to inhaling carbon nanotubes. Not even one.
The alternative to limited government is unlimited government.
You could have a battery on a credit card, and call it your "Charge Card".