Digital Home Thoughts: Scientists Create Paper-Thin, Flexible, Biodegradable Battery

"Part of the problem with designing flexible batteries and supercapacitors has always been the necessity of layering such devices. Typically, two electrode layers sandwich two charge-holding layers, with an insulating layer in the middle of it all. As the layers build up, flexibility goes out the window. However, researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and MIT have developed a new material that eliminates the need for a multilayer battery. They grew carbon nanotubes on a silicon substrate and impregnated the gaps between the tubes with cellulose—that's right, plain old paper. The cellulose also covered the ends of the nanotubes, but once it had dried, the paper material could be peeled off of the silicon substrate, leaving one end of the carbon nanotubes exposed to form an electrode."



While I am quite happy to hear of this news, I fear that this is yet another technology that is many years out. We have been posting on breakthrough battery technologies for some years now and I feel that none of them ever make it to market. Here, the researchers themselves claim that the materials are very expensive and this battery won't be production ready for many years. Anyways, we can at least start to imagine the kinds of devices that will be possible in the years to come.