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Researchers Spray-Paint Batteries Onto Almost Any Surface
Warmlight writes "Rice University researchers have created a type of lithium-ion battery that can be spray-painted onto most surfaces. 'Their batteries, outlined in Scientific Reports (abstract), are made up of five separate layers, each with its own recipe — together measuring just 0.5mm thick. To demonstrate the technique, the team painted batteries onto steel, glass, ceramic tile and even a beer stein.' What do you think this will do for future form-factors? Maybe a form-fitting PipBoy-style device that doesn't weigh 30lbs?"
The team at Rice just finally came out of the room after twenty years to break for lunch outside, and casually mentioned it to a passerby before they went back in.
In another twenty years expect batteries formed from pure thought.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There are two very important questions that should have been answered:
1) How much power are the getting from the Beer Stein in the picture.
2) What beer is in the stein.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I was expecting a few minutes at best so storing enough to run LED lights for 6 hours was impressive. The number of charge discharge cycles is a major question. What intrigues me is pairing this with spray on solar cells so you end up with a coating that collects and stores power. Imagine light poles that collect and store power then discharge it at night with no visible wires or solar cells. Also roofing tiles that collect and store energy. The real trick would be getting the life cycle to match solar cells which is actually quite long. Traditional cells wouldn't come close but pairing this with nano technology might make the cells more durable. Either way it's interesting technology. Ultimately though what it's likely to do is create devices that are completely disposable since the batteries are fully intergrated.
Now imagine 2 more techs, and tagging will be a sight indeed!
Just need spraypaint photocells, and spraypaint Oleds.
Booyah. Neon tagging.
In another twenty years expect batteries formed from pure thought.
Least reliable power source ever.
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That's great and everything. But what kind of capacitance can they get out of these?
As little as possible, one hopes, though I've never heard of parasitic capacitance as a major consideration in battery design. But when they get down to spray painting them on surfaces, who knows? Certainly the designers of any non-trivial circuit that is sprayed onto a surface will have to deal with this phenomenon.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
There are two very important questions that should have been answered:
1) How much power are the getting from the Beer Stein in the picture.
2) What beer is in the stein.
3) Are they also working on a spray-paintable Peltier cooler so that we can keep our beer cold and our hands warm at the same time?
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
Why is India in such a bad state when there are so many smart Indians?
High difficulty level. I live in Finland which has been called "the least failed state in the world". This is nice and all but anyone trying to improve India is dealing with something like 250 times the population, a thousand languages and cultures (probably an understatement) and a warm climate which will give you a great variety of diseases whenever it feels like it. There's also the whole mutual hate thing with Pakistan.
Given the circumstances India seems like a surprising success to me. I hope they can keep it up.
1. It removes the ability to have a drop in spare (i.e. is not user replaceable.)
2. The "packaging" they refer to is also a vital part of the mechanical integrity of a battery. Mechanical integrity is kind of important.
3. Spraying a battery directly to the case of a device ensures that the full force of any mechanical shock is applied to the battery as well.
All of this together makes me believe that the only use this could have is for relatively small items that you do not intend to move around.
Name 5 things that you can buy today that can remain in use for 20 years through repairs. Even if you can, any of those 5 thing you actually want after 20 years?
Yeah, I agree, being able to maintain and repair something should be better valued then disposable products but that is not the reality we live in. Even cars have a shelf life these days, whether through component failure or a failure to remain in style.
Instead there are many, many, many opportunities for companies to recycle and recover components and materials.
And ultimately, what is wrong with waste?
Seriously, waste disposable is simply a social issue. Nobody likes waste. They don't want a landfills in their backyards. Municipalities do not want to invest money to build more or maintain existing landfills. They don't want the headache of trying to find more land for a dump. Its probably one of the stupidest social issues in existence because we all generate waste, even the best of us, yet nobody wants to deal with it. So thus we assume waste is bad.
But I think that in the very near future people are going to look at waste like its a gold mine. Think of all the hydro-carbons locked in a landfill. Think of all the metal and aggregate materials that are locked away in a landfill. It may not be economically viable to "mine" a landfill currently as there are cheaper and easier ways to extract the raw materials we need for our everyday consumption, but one day it will become profitable to delve back into landfills to sort and extract its valuables.
So municipalities should invest heavily in recycling, recovery, and YES, even landfills regardless of the headaches because there is a huge potential for many cities to be sitting on a goldmine's worth of recoverable materials in the very near future. There are companies already out there that can turn garbage into energy and reclaim metals and aggregate materials using plasmification, and they produce emissions 10 times better then even strict California laws would allow. But the moment a city wants to store a bit of garbage somewhere it becomes this big social headache because of all the greenies thinking the world is going to end when another dump is created.
So whatever, spray my batteries directly on the device and when I am done, if nobody wants to buy it used, if there are no electronic recyclable programs to take it back, then dump it, period. In all likelihood its going to be reclaimed eventually.
The era of grabbing a screwdriver to tinker with and fix a broken device is pretty much over with as we head toward more micronization of components and faster automated manufacturing processes. But I don't think we have to worry about more disposable items as I don't believe this is anything more then a social issue arising from unwarranted green guilt because economically and even environmentally its going to be very attractive to recover materials from landfills rather then hunting around the planet looking for scarce raw materials.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
The problem is that the citizenry suffers from widespread crushing poverty and lack of basic necessary services to maintain a developed society because of an incredibly unbalanced distribution of wealth, constant abuse by megacorporations who take advantage of vast swaths of land, resources, and the workforce without any interference and in some cases active assistance from an incredibly corrupt government that has practically institutionalized bribery, grift, and nepotism all of which is constantly being besieged on all sides by a backwards ignorance-worshipping violent religious group that wants to drag the country back to the stone age.
Meanwhile in India they've got many of the same problems...
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
I'd just be happy with a battery that 1/2 to 1/10 of the energy volume density of gasoline
Ever raise kids?
No...how do they compare to gasoline for energy density?
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You can graph it, but it looks kind of weird. At newborn stage, the amount of internal energy is somewhat low - not for lack of capacity, just not much charge yet. They charge up in a couple of months though, and AMOUNT of energy remains constant from that point forward. What changes is the form factor.
When the form is small, the energy density is surprisingly high - easily a match for gasoline. (And sometimes might want to take a match to gasoline, but that's a different issue.) Difficult to harness this capacity though. As the form grows larger though, the density drops until it seems there's barely enough to power the form off the bed in the morning.
So... across the lifetime of the container, there's a sharp spike in density early, then relatively smooth (but noticeable) decline until it's no longer useful in powering even a small lawn mower or vacuum cleaner.