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Batteries Smaller Than a Grain of Salt
An anonymous reader writes "Lithium-ion batteries have become ubiquitous in today's consumer electronics — powering our laptops, phones, and iPods. Research funded by DARPA is pushing the limits of this technology and trying to create some of the tiniest batteries on Earth, the largest of which would be no bigger than a grain of sand. These tiny energy storage devices could one day be used to power the electronics and mechanical components of tiny micro- to nano-scale devices."
As exciting as this is, I would take this news... ... with a grain of salt.
Your English teacher would be disappointed. Ripped the first paragraph off completely.
...with a grain of salt.
There, I said it.
Looking forward to read the first complaints over built-in Batteries in the new iNanites by Apple!
BTW..
Would be awsome for the fanbois. Sacred parts from guru Jobs in your bloodvessels and softest tissue. OVERGASM!
Apple would still make it un-replaceable ;)
Seriously though, would it not be even more interesting if something useful existed that could make use of these batteries?
Why not create a battery that is composed of lots of these tiny batteries that could make a smartphone run for weeks???
The title says smaller than a grain of salt but the article says smaller than a grain of sand.
And what kind of salt are you talking about? Table salt, sea salt, pickling salt? Same goes for sand. Waikiki sand, Provincetown sand, Bali sand?
What would be nice is if there were some system of measurement that could be easily understood by the masses when talking about such sizes. For example, how many fractions of a Library of Congress would that be? Or maybe elephants. Elephants are always good. I once listened to a story on NPR about how much water is in the average cloud. The scientist (hydrologist?) involved used elephants to let the listener know how many elephants worth of water was being suspended above our heads when clouds are about.
Personally I prefer metric buttloads. Use that term and everyone knows what you're talking about.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
This could give a new definition to the term 'bugged.'
Just imagine the fun you could have with a remotely operated or autonomous flying reconnaissance/surveillance vehicle the size of an insect!
"Shit. I dropped the battery, hon."
"Where did it fall?"
"I...DON'T...KNOW!"
Just don't tell this to Sony.
Who knows how many micro explosions would we have to endure every day.
to make a zillion-volt battery that lasts a fraction of a second.
All technological progress came from the Apollo missions of the Space Age. Defense and the toy industry have nothing to do with it. Space Nutters, unite against this reality! Back to our fantasies!
I'm already going blind trying to solder components smaller than 0402.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
"The research is still in its early stages..."
is that 10 years off or never?
I don't know about everyone else, but I've had no less than 4 devices in the last year have faulty Li-Ion batteries (they didn't hold a charge, or ran out much faster than they should have). Each time I had to exchange the device for a new one, at which point it worked as expected.
Is this really how batteries are now? It's pathetic.
...tiniest batteries on Earth, the largest of which would be no bigger than a grain of sand
Call the Guiness people--these might be the biggest smallest batteries out there!
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
I can just imagine trying to change THOSE.
could you pass me the salt?
They've got this already... they're called capacitors. Ok, they're not smaller than a grain of salt, but an 0201 package is really fricken small.
Do you really need the greater power density you get from a chemical reaction rather than a capacitor at those sizes? A capacitor is so much easier to fabricate and charge that I can't imagine why you would go for a battery. I mean, in order to charge a battery, you'd need a chip that is MUCH larger than a grain of salt... although even for a cap you'd want a voltage regulator of some sort.
Maybe I'm missing something here. What is this for? Nano-machines? Nano listening devices? Nano-trackers? Now that seems like the really interesting question....
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
Slashdot could have gotten more readers with this headline:
SALT GRAIN BATTERIES USED FOR SURVEILLANCE!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
But I don't get much of a charge out of it....
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
... no, wait, never mind. I thought you said dickhead, in which case it would be the other way around.
8-P
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
... even when it's not Burrito Day in the caf.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
To power the iPod iNvisa.
http://video.yahoo.com/watch/4656101/12447278
Using atomic layer deposition -- a slow but precise process that allows layers of material only an atom thick to be sprayed on a surface -- she has successfully applied the solid electrolyte lithium aluminosilicate to these nanomaterials.
Using ALD (a relatively costly and slow throughput technique)
The research is still in its early stages: other components of these 3D microbatteries, such as the electrodes, have also been developed, but they have yet to be assembled and integrated to make a functioning battery.
The first stages of this research have begun
www.RacquetUp.org - Helping Detroit Youth
It is already a pain to change AAA batteries, imagine what it is going to be like trying to change one of these things. Good forbid you drop the thing, or put it in the wrong way. Think, how many sides does a grain of salt have! That is going to the number of ways that someone is going to install it wrong!
Also, lets say you want to test it to see if it still has a charge. You put it on your tongue and it dissolves! Now your are stuck shelling out another 5 bucks to Energizer!
So we current have current laptop batteries that store X power in Y space and when then go wrong they over heat or even burst into flames so the new batteries that store the X power in "grain of rice" space then the power density stored must be a minimum of a 1000 times higher what happens when one of those goes wrong?
Like vernor vinge's localizers perhaps?
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1137
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1138
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Well if you put a thousand of these together I'd hope they could power a car or make my laptop battery last longer :P