Microscopic batteries may power future mobile phones

April 18, 2013 3:04pm

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed tiny but high-powered, rapid-charging batteries that fit the description "small but terrible."

 

The researchers see the new microbatteries as being fit for emerging mobile phones and devices that require much power and fast charging.

 

"With so much power, the batteries could enable sensors or radio signals that broadcast 30 times farther, or devices 30 times smaller. The batteries are rechargeable and can charge 1,000 times faster than competing technologies – imagine juicing up a credit-card-thin phone in less than a second," the university said on its website.

 

Aside from consumer electronics, the batteries can be used for medical devices, lasers, sensors and other high-powered applications.

 

The university said such a battery can even be used to jump-start a dead car battery.

 

Mechanical science and engineering professor William King, who led the team in developing the battery, said batteries had lagged behind electronics in terms of innovation.

 

“A battery can deliver far more power than anybody ever thought. In recent decades, electronics have gotten small. The thinking parts of computers have gotten small. And the battery has lagged far behind. This is a microtechnology that could change all of that. Now the power source is as high-performance as the rest of it," he said.

 

Balancing power and energy needs

 

Until now, present power sources have forced users to choose between power and energy: high-power sources that release energy quickly but take long to recharge, or longer-lasting sources that take long to recharge.

 

“There’s a sacrifice. If you want high energy you can’t get high power; if you want high power it’s very difficult to get high energy. But for very interesting applications, especially modern applications, you really need both. That’s what our batteries are starting to do. We’re really pushing into an area in the energy storage design space that is not currently available with technologies today,” said graduate student James Pikul, first author of the paper.

 

The key to the new batteries is an internal three-dimensional microstructure that combined the battery's anode and cathode "at the microscale."

 

Now, the researchers are thinking of ways of integrating their batteries with other electronic components at low cost.

 

“It’s a new enabling technology. It’s not a progressive improvement over previous technologies; it breaks the normal paradigms of energy sources. It’s allowing us to do different, new things,” Pikul said.

 

Consumer products within 2 years?

 

A separate article on tech site Mashable quoted King as saying they are now "past the laboratory demonstration stage, (and are) working with systems integrators now."

 

King said the technology could find its way to consumers in "perhaps 1-2 years."

 

"The first applications of this technology will be to be replace supercapacitors in radios and personal electronics," he said.

 

On the other hand, Mashable noted the technology originated at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, "the birthplace of the fictional HAL 9000 computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey." — TJD, GMA News

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