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3D-printed microbattery

ExtremeTech readers know by now that new battery tech is ever promising and perpetually just over the horizon, merely never quite seems to be attainable. Harvard just added to that field past 3D printing a lithium-ion microbattery that could be used to power devices in a number of markets, such as medicine.

Equally phones and other consumer devices are getting bigger, a microbattery may seem like a light-headed prospect for the consumer market place, only a host of other equipment could greatly benefit from tiny batteries. Minuscule sensors on clothing computers — such equally Google's Glass — could benefit from fifty-fifty smaller batteries providing them with power. Small-scale medical implants could become a more viable solution to ailments if they tin can maintain power through the use of microbatteries, rather than using batteries that are roughly the size of the implants themselves.

In order to make a battery so minor, the Harvard and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign squad used a 3D printer to create tiny stacks of battery electrodes. Each electrode is thinner than a strand of man pilus. The battery is of the standard lithium-ion variety, and so with it comes all of the faults and benefits of lithium-ion, rather than a new source extended power.

The custom 3D printer employed past the squad uses special inks that are electrochemically active, and harden into cathodes and anodes in one case extruded from the printer's nozzle. The anodes and cathodes were printed in a blueprint similar to a common comb, then a case and electrolyte solution were added as finishing touches. The overall battery measures in at a width of less than one millimeter.

In the to a higher place video, you can plainly see the 3D printer'due south nozzle methodically edifice the battery layer-past-layer, and quite quickly also, demonstrating that mass production may not be too hard.

As for performance, the team claims that the 3D-printed microbatteries are comparable to the larger lithium-ions in our devices, but in terms of scale. The discharge and recharge rates are proportionally like, too as the batteries' free energy density and life cycle. Since the microbattery is similar in terms of calibration just isn't on the aforementioned scale as, for instance, the battery in your phone, information technology doesn't final nearly as long or provide every bit much power. Nonetheless, if scaled up to the size of your phone, it'd seemingly provide a similar service to your phone's current bombardment.

For now, though — like virtually astonishing improvements in the field of battery tech — there'due south no word on when this 3D-printed microbattery might striking the market, or be incorporated into some kind of consumer device.

Now read: New sulfur-based battery is safer, cheaper, more powerful than lithium-ion

Research paper: doi: 10.1002/adma.201301036 – "3D Printing of Interdigitated Li-Ion Microbattery Architectures"