Conventional lithium-ion batteries are pretty useful, but
they have their limitations. For one thing, because
of the way their components are housed in metal canisters, they can only be
manufactured as cylinders or rectangles. Pulickel Ajayan, Neelam Singh and
their Rice University Colleagues have solved this problem by developing paintable batteries.
(a)Simplified view of a conventional Li-ion battery, a
multilayer device assembled by tightly wound ‘jellyroll’ sandwich of
anode-separator-cathode layers.
(b) Direct fabrication of Li-ion battery on the
surface of interest by sequentially spraying component paints stencil masks
tailored to desired geometry and surface.
Each component is spray-painted onto a surface in layers, as shown above. The researchers were able to use
this technique to apply batteries to a number of materials, including glass,
stainless steel and flexible polymer sheets. They even fabricated a battery
directly onto the curved surface of a ceramic mug.
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