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Paper Batteries Might Be the Next Big Power Craze

by Matthew Zuras on December 11, 2009 at 11:55 AM


Forget paper tigers, dolls, and trails, the next breakthrough in the pulpy stuff involves a battery. Researchers from Stanford University have possibly saved the stuff of stationary from falling into total obsolescence, transforming our first medium of mass communication into the stuff that powers media devices themselves. By coating standard copy paper with an ink made from carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires, the researchers have successfully created a paper battery.

As paper is porous, it readily absorbs the highly conductive carbon nanotubes, which become enmeshed in the paper's fibers. The nanotubes act as electrodes for the battery; by sandwiching two treated pieces of nanotube paper around untreated paper and dipping the layers in an electrolyte solution, the paper battery is born. It can be folded, bent, rolled, and wrapped around objects.

While these don't represent the first paper-thin batteries (plastic and cellulose have been successfully used in the past), they are the first made from ordinary office material. The potential applications for this kind of technology are enormous, from powering everything from Kindles to cars. And the methods needed to produce paper batteries already exist (paper, ink, and printers) at a relatively low cost -- meaning, we could see paper batteries hit the market very soon. Check out the video below to see Yi Cui, head of the Stanford research team, explain all the possibilities for paper batteries.

As frequent paper apologists, we're happy to see our favorite matrix of wood pulp getting a hi-tech face-lift and being repurposed to meet the needs of an increasingly electronic society. [From: Discovery News]

Tags: batteries, battery, paper, research, top

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