Small in size, big on power: New microbatteries the most powerful yet

asval · April 17, 2013, 8:09am

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Though they be but little, they are fierce. The most powerful batteries on the planet are only a few millimeters in size, yet they pack such a punch that a driver could use a cellphone powered by these batteries to jump-start a dead car battery – and then recharge the phone in the blink of an eye.

Developed by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the new microbatteries out-power even the best supercapacitors and could drive new applications in radio communications and compact electronics.

The new microbatteries offer both power and energy, and by tweaking the structure a bit, the researchers can tune them over a wide range on the power-versus-energy scale.

The batteries owe their high performance to their internal three-dimensional microstructure. Batteries have two key components: the anode (minus side) and cathode (plus side). Building on a novel fast-charging cathode design by materials science and engineering professor Paul Braun’s group, King and Pikul developed a matching anode and then developed a new way to integrate the two components at the microscale to make a complete battery with superior performance.

With so much power, the batteries could enable sensors or radio signals that broadcast 30 times farther, or devices 30 times smaller. The batteries are rechargeable and can charge 1,000 times faster than competing technologies – imagine juicing up a credit-card-thin phone in less than a second. In addition to consumer electronics, medical devices, lasers, sensors and other applications could see leaps forward in technology with such power sources available.

Ledsmoke · April 17, 2013, 8:14am

Thank you for sharing :-)

Chloe · April 17, 2013, 11:35am

Sounds exciting! I hope we get to see the fruit of their labour.

Toph · April 17, 2013, 1:23pm

Thanks for that. Where can i get some

Tumbleweed48 · April 17, 2013, 1:41pm

It won’t be long until we have a cell phone on our thumbnail and a dime sized 1,000 lumen headlamp imbedded in our forehead, while we watch our movies and surf the net with our Google glasses. I’ll leave where the battery compartment might be to your imagination….as well as what we use for a plug in to recharge.

djozz · April 17, 2013, 1:50pm

This is not the first revolutionary claim. I will wait for an actual usable battery.

skeptical-djozz

Boaz · April 17, 2013, 1:54pm

Wallbuys has them .

Ramblings · April 17, 2013, 3:55pm

They're already on eBay.
Lots of sellers have higher capacities in lithium-ion batteries than that already.