Stanford-nanotubes + ink + paper = InstantBatteryOrSupercap!

[MitchJi]

Hi,

Short on specifications but this looks promising (and a DIY possibility):

Stanford researchers have discovered a way to rapidly make batteries and supercapacitors with ink that contains carbon nanotubes and ordinary paper. As shown in the video below, they simply coat the paper with the special ink, put it in an oven and out comes a highly conductive storage device. "The small diameter helps the nanomaterial ink stick strongly to the fibrous paper, making the battery and supercapacitor very durable. The paper supercapacitor may last through 40,000 charge-discharge cycles - at least an order of magnitude more than lithium batteries."

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/december7/nanotubes-ink-paper-120709.html

Stanford, nanotubes + ink + paper = instant battery

Dip an ordinary piece of paper into ink infused with carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires, and it turns into a battery or supercapacitor. Crumple the piece of paper, and it still works. Stanford researcher Yi Cui sees many uses for this new way of storing electricity.

BY JANELLE WEAVER

Stanford scientists are harnessing nanotechnology to quickly produce ultra-lightweight, bendable batteries and supercapacitors in the form of everyday paper.

Simply coating a sheet of paper with ink made of carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires makes a highly conductive storage device, said Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering.

"Society really needs a low-cost, high-performance energy storage device, such as batteries and simple supercapacitors," he said.

Like batteries, capacitors hold an electric charge, but for a shorter period of time. However, capacitors can store and discharge electricity much more rapidly than a battery.

Cui's work is reported in the paper "Highly Conductive Paper for Energy Storage Devices," published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"These nanomaterials are special," Cui said. "They're a one-dimensional structure with very small diameters." The small diameter helps the nanomaterial ink stick strongly to the fibrous paper, making the battery and supercapacitor very durable. The paper supercapacitor may last through 40,000 charge-discharge cycles – at least an order of magnitude more than lithium batteries. The nanomaterials also make ideal conductors because they move electricity along much more efficiently than ordinary conductors, Cui said.

Bing Hu, a post-doctoral fellow, prepares a small square of ordinary paper to with an ink that will deposit nanotubes on the surface that can then be charged with energy to create a battery.

Cui had previously created nanomaterial energy storage devices using plastics. His new research shows that a paper battery is more durable because the ink adheres more strongly to paper (answering the question, "Paper or plastic?"). What's more, you can crumple or fold the paper battery, or even soak it in acidic or basic solutions, and the performance does not degrade. "We just haven't tested what happens when you burn it," he said.

The flexibility of paper allows for many clever applications. "If I want to paint my wall with a conducting energy storage device," Cui said, "I can use a brush." In his lab, he demonstrated the battery to a visitor by connecting it to an LED (light-emitting diode), which glowed brightly.

A paper supercapacitor may be especially useful for applications like electric or hybrid cars, which depend on the quick transfer of electricity. The paper supercapacitor's high surface-to-volume ratio gives it an advantage.

"This technology has potential to be commercialized within a short time," said Peidong Yang, professor of chemistry at the University of California-Berkeley. "I don't think it will be limited to just energy storage devices," he said. "This is potentially a very nice, low-cost, flexible electrode for any electrical device."

Cui predicts the biggest impact may be in large-scale storage of electricity on the distribution grid. Excess electricity generated at night, for example, could be saved for peak-use periods during the day. Wind farms and solar energy systems also may require storage.

"The most important part of this paper is how a simple thing in daily life – paper – can be used as a substrate to make functional conductive electrodes by a simple process," Yang said. "It's nanotechnology related to daily life, essentially."

Cui's research team includes postdoctoral scholars Liangbing Hu and JangWook Choi, and graduate student Yuan Yang.

Janelle Weaver is a science-writing intern at the Stanford News Service.

Post doctoral students in the lab of Prof. Yi Cui, Materials Science and Engineering, light up a diode from a battery made from treated paper, similar to what you would find in a copy machine. The paper batteries are treated with a nanotube ink, baked and folded into electrical generating sources like the one wrapped in foil seen here:

[youtube]QPTcQJPbGHw[/youtube]

 

[gestalt]

Wow, the possibilities are endless. Imagine being able to cram a battery into any space you want. I really see this as becoming very key in the very fledgling electric flight industry. You could have structural pieces of the electro glider doubling as batteries. Remember, if you can keep a plane under 250 lbs it's legal to fly without a pilots licence. Or thin film solar panels with this tech imbedded into the underside, all in one battery/solar pannel units that weigh in around the same as silicon crystal pannels. Ah, I could go on all night.

 

[swbluto]

I wonder if I could wear paper battery clothes?

Also, it'd be nice to get figures on energy density. That's the one key metric batteries really need to improve to be competitive with combustion energy sources.

 

[MitchJi]

Hi,

Wow, the possibilities are endless…

…Ah, I could go on all night.

The possibility that interests me is a brief case full of 8.5" x 11" paper, soaked in $10 worth of ink powering an Ebike for 50 miles.

 

[swbluto]

Hi,

Wow, the possibilities are endless…

…Ah, I could go on all night.

The possibility that interests me is a brief case full of 8.5" x 11" paper, soaked in $10 worth of ink powering an Ebike for 50 miles.

At that price, I have a feeling a few of the ES crowd would convert to cars.

Last time I heard, though, carbon nanotubes weren't cheap. I'm not sure what the price is for ink form, though, and I have no idea if it's getting cheaper (In much the same way computers and genetic decoding has).

 

[vanilla ice]

..$10 worth of ink..

Thats the trick isn't it.. the fact that the substrate is paper isn't so much the big deal here right, its the bitchin ink. How easily can the price be driven down?

 

[MitchJi]

Hi,

I got the qoute a link in an thread started three hours previously (search didn't turn it up):
http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=14677
From here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091207/sc_nm/us_battery_paper

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Ordinary paper could one day be used as a lightweight battery to power the devices that are now enabling the printed word to be eclipsed by e-mail, e-books and online news.

Scientists at Stanford University in California reported on Monday they have successfully turned paper coated with ink made of silver and carbon nanomaterials into a "paper battery" that holds promise for new types of lightweight, high-performance energy storage.

The same feature that helps ink adhere to paper allows it to hold onto the single-walled carbon nanotubes and silver nanowire films. Earlier research found that silicon nanowires could be used to make batteries 10 times as powerful as lithium-ion batteries now used to power devices such as laplop computers.

"Taking advantage of the mature paper technology, low cost, light and high-performance energy-storage are realized by using conductive paper as current collectors and electrodes," the scientists said in research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This type of battery could be useful in powering electric or hybrid vehicles, would make electronics lighter weight and longer lasting, and might even lead someday to paper electronics, the scientists said. Battery weight and life have been an obstacle to commercial viability of electric-powered cars and trucks.

"Society really needs a low-cost, high-performance energy storage device, such as batteries and simple supercapacitors," Stanford assistant professor of materials science and engineering and paper co-author Yi Cui said.

Cui said in an e-mail that in addition to being useful for portable electronics and wearable electronics, "Our paper supercapacitors can be used for all kinds of applications that require instant high power."

"Since our paper batteries and supercapacitors can be very low cost, they are also good for grid-connected energy storage," he said.

Peidong Yang, professor of chemistry at the University of California-Berkeley, said the technology could be commercialized within a short time.

..$10 worth of ink..

Thats the trick isn't it.. the fact that the substrate is paper isn't so much the big deal here right, its the bitchin ink. How easily can the price be driven down?

$10 is wishful thinking but they do repeatedly mention the low cost and the cheapest Solar cells are based on Ink, Printed on flexible panels which are probably more expensive than "flexible substrate":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanosolar

Nanosolar is a developer of solar power technology. Based in San Jose, CA, Nanosolar has developed and commercialized a low-cost printable solar cell manufacturing process. The company started selling panels mid-December 2007, and plans to sell them at around $1 per watt (one fifth the price of the silicon cells)…

…These details involve a semiconductor ink that it claims will enable it to produce solar cells with a basic printing process, rather than using slow and expensive high-vacuum based thin-film deposition processes. In Nanosolar's process, the ink is deposited on a flexible substrate (the “paper”), and then nanocomponents in the ink align themselves properly via molecular self-assembly…

One fifth the cost of Lipo or even A123 would be sweet.

 

[swbluto]

..$10 worth of ink..

Thats the trick isn't it.. the fact that the substrate is paper isn't so much the big deal here right, its the bitchin ink. How easily can the price be driven down?

It appears that the price of carbon nanotubes has been getting more affordable.

http://www.electronics.ca/presscenter/articles/743/1/Carbon-Nanotube-Production-Dramatic-Price-Decrease-Down-to-150kg-for-Semi-Industrial-Applications/Page1.html

At $150 / kg and heading towards $50, it looks like you're looking at $200 per 200 wh (Assuming an energy density greater than the best lithium which is 200 wh/kg), at a minimum. With a lifespan 10 times more than lithium, a dollar per watt-hour isn't bad at all. Now as to calendar life?

At this site, http://www.cheaptubes.com/carbon-nanotubes-prices.htm#Single_Walled_Nanotubes_Prices , it doesn't appear nanotubes are cheap at all. They list all prices above $1000/kg.

Now, what about those silver nanowires? How expensive does that get?

 

[vanilla ice]

Ah damn, yeah the $ilver nanowire$ also, forgot about those.

 

[gestalt]

This is really a time where I hope with all my might that this is not just going to be another issue of vaporware monthly. This is a tech that is easily understood and aplied by the average tinkerer. Also using such a easy to work material, the equipment you would need to build your own packs would probably be minimal.

 

[swbluto]

This is a tech that is easily understood and aplied by the average tinkerer. Also using such a easy to work material, the equipment you would need to build your own packs would probably be minimal.

Good luck getting ahold of the ink, or its constituents. I can practically guarantee you can't make "carbon nanotubes" nor "Silver nanowires" at home.

 

[gestalt]

Certainly not, nor can I melt steel or roll my own frame tubes. But if this ink can get into the hands of builders, hobbyists and engineers then you have garage innovation happening. From the sound of things the process of applying the ink is not over complicated and wont require thousands of dollars of equipment. What we need is this ink to be available to the public.

 

[MitchJi]

Hi,

A little more from BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8401566.stm

Battery made of paper charges up

Batteries made from plain copier paper could make for future energy storage that is truly paper thin.

The paper battery can be rolled up tightly with no adverse effects

The approach relies on the use of carbon nanotubes - tiny cylinders of carbon - to collect electric charge.

While small-scale nanotube batteries have been demonstrated before, the plain paper approach lends itself to making larger devices more cheaply.

The work, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could lead to "paintable" energy storage.

Because of its structure of millions of tiny, interconnected fibres, paper is a good candidate to hold on to carbon nanotubes, providing a scaffold on which to build devices.

However, paper is also mechanically tough, and can be bent, curled or folded, more than the metal or plastic surfaces that are currently used or under development.

Good on paper
A team of researchers at Stanford University started with off-the-shelf copier paper, painting it with an "ink" made of carbon nanotubes.

The coated paper is then dipped in lithium-containing solutions and an electrolyte to provide the chemical reaction that generates a battery's electric current.

The paper acts to collect the electric charge from the reaction. Using paper in this way could reduce the weight of batteries, typically made with metal current collectors, by 20%.

The team's batteries are also capable of releasing their stored energy quickly. That is a valuable characteristic for applications that need quick bursts of energy, such as electric vehicles - although the team has no immediate plans to develop vehicle batteries.

Electric cars could benefit from the batteries' quick energy bursts

Liangbing Hu, lead author on the research, said the most important aspect of the demonstration was that paper is an inexpensive and well-understood material - making wider usage of the technology more likely.

"Standard copier paper used in our everyday life can be a solution in storing energy in a more efficient and cheap way," Dr Hu told BBC News.

"The experienced technology developed in the paper industry over a century can be transferred to improve the process and performance of these paper-based devices."

The team says that adaptations to the technique in the future could allow for simply painting the nanotube ink and active materials onto surfaces such as walls.

They have even experimented with a number of textiles, paving the way for batteries made largely of cloth.

 

[def215]

i just wonder what determines their voltage. would it be something like the size of the piece of paper or would it be the concentration of the "ink." also what would the chemical makeup of the battery be called.