Monday, May 12, 2014: Researchers have taken the first step towards creating bendable and fully foldable electronic devices. In a bid to replace the traditional polymers and carbon-based materials such as carbon nanotubes deployed currently to provide critical back-up power for portable and flexible electronics, researchers at the University of Houston have now developed a new ‘thin’ film for energy storage. The film is much thinner than paper, is flexible as well as bendable and can store enough energy to power bendable and fully foldable electronic devices in the near future.
James Tour and his colleagues have developed gold nanomesh electrodes that offer ultra-high stretchability. At the same time, they can provide good electrical conductivity. According to Tour and Co, the current crop of materials fall short as reliable super-capacitors, and their new technology is well on its way to become the viable alternative. “While flexible gadgets such as “electronic skin” and roll-up touch screens are moving ever closer to reality, their would-be power sources are either too wimpy or too stiff. But that’s changing fast,” the researchers were quoted in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (ACS).
Tour’s ‘flexible’ material consists of nanoporous nickel-fluoride electrodes layered around a solid electrolyte providing battery-like super-capacitor performance. These nano-pores allow ions to flow easily throughout the material so much so that the resulting structure can pack in far more power for its size. The material is thus able to provide the best qualities of a high-efficiency battery as well as a high-powered super-capacitor. Researchers claim that bend and fold the film and recharge it thousands of times with little or no loss in performance.
Researchers claim that it’s possible to scale up the material as desired either by increasing the size or through the addition of layers.
