By Colin Lecher Posted 06.28.2012 at 12:58 pm 3 Comments

Paint-on Battery Rice University

Lithium-ion batteries work by stacking active ingredients in layers. In your laptop and phone, the layers are stacked into a block, but a new process could make that seem quaint: spray-paint the necessary layers onto any surface like paint, to make an instant battery anywhere.

Scientists at Rice University tested out different paints until they found a set that could work as the necessary components for a lithium-ion battery: two current collectors, a cathode, an anode, and a polymer separator. The layers can be airbrushed on and the resulting battery is fully rechargeable. To test it out, researchers put it on steel, glass, ceramic bathroom tiles, and (why not?) a beer stein. Batteries on the bathroom tiles were able to send out a steady 2.4 volts--enough to power light-emitting diodes that spelled out "Rice" for a full six hours.

[Nature Scientific Reports]

3 Comments

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Joro 05
06/30/12 at 7:24 am

I need a similar things with photovoltaic dye.

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TeslasDisciple
07/14/12 at 10:05 am

Hook this up to buildings along with outer solar panels, and then you can power some of the simpler things in an office building. Such as he AC or maybe even the lights, if you can get good enough panels.

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Joygazmic
08/02/12 at 2:44 pm

I think you mean such as lights, or maybe even the A/C, as lights take a fraction of the power cooling a building does.
This seems to be an interesting project, with most probable uses being low-end energy storage for powering things with solar energy and storing extra energy absorbed through the day for use at night. I can't imagine it'd be usable for powering much beyond lighting, though the potential is directly correlated with our technology in solar energy.

However, that's just where I see the project moving, it could move any number of directions, afterall it's simply convenient energy storage.

"a lot" NOT "alot"



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