Thursday, June 20, 2013: Printed micro batteries, as big as a grain of sand, will soon be supplying electricity to the smallest of devices. According to researchers from the US, whose findings were published in the journal Advance Materials, such batteries have been developed using three dimensional printing techniques.
A team of researchers from Harvard University’s Wyss Institute and the University of Illinois said that these newly developed batteries could be useful for powering several projects in different fields, which have been pending due to the lack of power sources that are small enough. The microbatteries were printed from stacks of very small battery electrodes.
According to reports, the width of each of these electrodes is less than that of a human hair.
According to researchers, the batteries may be miniscule in size, but their charge and discharge rate, energy densities and life cycle can be compared with commercial batteries.
The development of the battery was preceded by the creation and testing of several specialised inks. Inks to be used in 3D printing have to fulfill two requirements: firstly, they have to be able to exit very thin nozzles like the toothpaste does from the tube; secondly, the ink must harden immediately into its required form. The development of the required type of ink was followed by several complex steps, which finally led to the creation of the micro batteries.
