Typically, when someone says something about batteries in the world most people live in, it's about the fact that they to recharge one or replace one. They're big. Unwieldy. Because of that, they are easy to throw long distances when they are dead - but that's about it.
In this month's Scientific American article, 'Miniaturized Power'teaser, there's a ray of hope. While manufacturers aren't planning to replace the AA battery with the new concept of 'nanograss', it's worth a mention because of two things: Battery technology hasn't advanced that much, and power requirements for devices are lower and lower.
The concept itself is pretty simple, and I'll keep it simple for the average person to understand. The lenses of cameraphones are controlled by electricity - changing the amount of electricity applied to the lense in the cameraphone causes a change in shape of a transparent bit of liquid. I don't advise taking your cell phone apart to see it (though I would love to take your phone apart to see it), but that's how it focuses.
So Tom Krupenkin of Bell Labs, who worked on the liquid microlenses, played with the idea of controlling a chemical reaction using a similar concept (the big words being electrowetting, hydrophilic, and superhydrophilic, etc). And a battery is... a controlled chemical reaction that generates electricity. The concept of the battery results in it looking like a small field of grass - where the chemical reactions are controlled by allowing the chemicals to react through control of something like the lenses. You know how water rolls off duck feathers and lotus leaves? Same concept.
There's a movie on it here - it's a fair size MOV file, so be patient if you have a slower connection. They show it working... It's a Public Relations video, but the imagination there is pretty good. The focus on military applications means that funding for a lot of it will probably come from the Department of Defense, but hey... They expect to be in production for some applications at the end of next year.
While the battery concept itself is for long term storage and bursts of electricity, done on a larger scale it could mean lighter and more environmentally friendly batteries that can sit around for (they say) 15 years until they are activated.
Personally, by it's description I see a role for this in emergency communications - as do the manufacturers. It also could be useful for solar energy applications, where the battery is only used for charging unless something happens to cause it to activate. In other words, storage for such things becomes easier, storing energy becomes lighter and more efficient, and devices that are smaller may become smaller still because of this innovation. It's brilliant, really.
For the more geeky folk out there, here's a 246 kilobyte PDF file on it - and for non-geeky folks, there are pictures which can come in handy to see what this is without downloading a movie on your connection.
It's easy for me to think that this nanobattery (derivative of nanotechnology) could be outfitted for emergency SMS communication during emergencies and disasters, so that people can send messages back and forth even when their main battery is dead - if what they are saying is true, this is a battery which may outlast your phone. People at MobileActive should probably pay attention to this.
And me? I'd love to hook up the solar panels to batteries like these... In fact, they could be integrated into the panels... The renewable energy solutions could decrease in weight and therefore portability... anything would be better than those 4 red batteries at 118 lbs each...
Yes, I'm excited about this. And in about 5 years, you might get excited when something you have to lug around decreases in weight some more.
I just celebrate early, I guess.
Image at top is one of me dinking with the solar panels before I set them up. You can view the full image here.
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