Techno Babble

“Ink” made of carbon nanotubes, silver nanowires and paper are the ingredients necessary to create a battery according to research led by Yi Cui, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, and his team at Stanford University .

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

Yi 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.

They have also experimented with using other materials such as textiles.

I thought paper batteries had been around for some time, here’s an article on the BBC new site from Aug 2007.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6945732.stm#graphic

Perhaps, in the future, batteries could be created with 2D or 3D printers, and if you could also also print electrical circuitry the possibilites become endless.

So that’s the technology, how would you use it ?

Morph is a concept that explores how nanotechnology might be used in the future for next generation mobile devices – utilising features such as flexible materials, transparent electronics, self-cleaning surfaces and more.

High resolution image (JPEG file, zipped, 1.5 MB)

The concept has been developed by the Nokia Research Center (NRC) in partnership with the Nanoscience Center at the University of Cambridge, and demonstrates how a future mobile device can be transformed into completely different shapes.

High resolution image (JPEG file, zipped, 2.2 MB)

Nanotechnology enables the creation of materials that are flexible, can be stretched, made transparent and are very strong. A device made out of a material like this could be folded to fit into a pocket or opened out to present a larger working suruface area.

High resolution image (JPEG file, zipped, 2 MB)

The material could be self-cleaning and the surface could even incoporate a covering of “nanograss” structures which would allow it to harvest solar enery and be self-powered.

Read more about this concept at

http://www.nokia.com/about-nokia/research/demos/the-morph-concept

Nokia Research is at

http://research.nokia.com/

and the Cambridge Nanoscience Centre can be found at

http://www.nanoscience.cam.ac.uk/