Energy Storage

Suddenly tiny broad band vibration harvesters, transparent film photovoltaics and many other forms of harvesting become sufficient and the 20 year node looks possible.

Yet it is only a first step to small devices communicating without human involvement and without those radio masts and their expensive and vulnerable cabling. Remember that...

Arveni demonstrated the first infra-red, single button harvesting, batteryless TV remote control in November 2009 for IPTV provider SFR. This batteryless remote has been chosen by the Museum of Science of Paris, as one of the 10 worldwide most significant innovations in 2009 and is now on show at the Tech Galerie.

Enfucell & SoftBattery featured by Reader's Digest around the globe

Toppan Forms, a leading information management solution provider, will start to test market product applications by combining various printed electronics technologies. Unlike conventional electronics, printed electronics are not rigid and can be converted into different shapes and sizes. Innovative products such as a battery charger in the shape of brief case or POP displays for marketing can be customarily designed and manufactured. Test marketing will start this summer and full scale marketing is expected to start in 2011.

California-based electric car and battery company CODA Automotive, together with joint venture partner, Lishen Power Battery, has secured $394 million of committed capital.

Holst Centre and others are working on body area networking to monitor vital signs, control drug delivery according to need and otherwise progress towards bionic man and woman and care of the disabled and elderly. Unfortunately cutting into your body to change batteries brings with it a significant percentage of mortalities, not just pain and infection. Energy harvesting within the body is potentially helpful but biobatteries and thermoelectric generators provide only weak amounts of electricity in such applications.

At Sensors Expo and Conference June 7-9 in Rosemont Illinois USA, the following topics will be covered in the energy harvesting stream.

For 40 years, so called integrated circuits have integrated little more than transistors, diodes and sensors onto one piece of material but now there are much more integrated circuits arriving where most electrical and electronic components are co-deposited on flexible substrates. Those flexible substrates are key, because this new electronics will be affordable and desirable on everything from apparel to human skin and electrical and consumer packaged goods, where surfaces are only rarely flat.

In February 2010, ITSUBO Advanced Materials Innovation Center and Hatanaka Electric announced a large area printed lithium polymer battery that can be reshaped as shown in the pictures. This is the statement:

170 years ago, Faraday appreciated the different electrical properties of nano gold over bulk metal in electrical devices, so applying nanotechnology to these things is scarcely new. However, the huge sums now being applied to improvement of lithium traction batteries in particular are now leading to work on a much larger scale and thin film technology, nanotechnology and printing are in increasingly important part of this.

The demands placed on new, high-tech materials are continually increasing, and existing material systems are reaching their limits. Due to their exceptional electrical and mechanical properties, carbon nanotubes (CNTs), graphene and their composite materials offer high potential for use in diverse applications such as photovoltaics, sensors, semiconductor devices, displays, conductors, smart textiles and energy conversion devices (e.g., fuel cells, harvesters and batteries).

The conference of about 40 people "Lithium Battery Technology and System Development" in London 9 March 2010 was concerned with "breaking barriers for electric vehicles".

One of the main issues in deploying solar, wind and electric-car technologies involves efficiently storing energy. With that in mind, scientists at international science and technology enterprise Battelle are in the early stages of developing a technology that addresses storage needs affordably. The supercapacitor technology developed on Battelle's Columbus campus is projected to capture and store large amounts of electricity for extended time periods and also release the energy quickly.

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) - self organising, self healing networks of small "nodes" - have huge potential across industrial, military and other many other sectors. While appreciable sales have now been established, major progress depends on standards and achieving twenty year life.

Find out the most exciting advances and applications in the new world of stretchable, invisible, morphable, tightly rollable, edible and other previously impossible electronics.

Enfucell, a Finnish company recognized for its achievements in developing its SoftBattery® technology, has received a 600.000 eur capital injection from its existing and new owners, including Vera Venture and Varma, who have both invested in the company previously.

The first fully printed electronic game card has been developed by Austrian company prelonic.

Anantha Chandrakasan, MIT's Joseph F. and Nancy P. Keithley Professor of Electrical Engineering and director of the MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories, and Yogesh Ramadass (PhD '09) believe they have figured out how to avoid doctors getting beneath a patient's skin to replace batteries for implanted biomedical monitoring or treatment systems.

With electric cars increasingly employing energy harvesting in shock absorbers, regenerative braking, thermoelectrics on hybrid engine and exhaust and photovoltaics on the roof, attention is turning to two wheel electric vehicles, starting with regenerative braking in electric motorcycles.