Energy Storage

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.

Two wheel electric vehicles (EV) have a bright future with sales already a magnitude higher than the numbers for any other type of EV. IDTechEx forecasts for 2010 and 2014 are as follows.

At yesterday's International Solid State Circuit Conference, imec and Holst Centre reported a 2.4GHz/915MHz wake-up receiver which consumes only 51µW power.

Ordinary textiles could be transformed into batteries that hold up to three times more energy than a mobile phone battery, by simply dipping them into nanoparticle-infused ink.

Researchers at The Advanced Materials Innovation Centre in Japan have developed a lithium polymer battery that can be manufactured by printing technology.

Europe's largest event on Printed Electronics, the IDTechEx Printed Electronics Europe 2010 in Dresden, Germany in April, will reflect new trends in the subject such as carbon nanotubes in conductive paper and transistors, printing silicon for enhancing solar cells, for transistors and other uses and printing copper at a fraction of the cost of silver.

Researchers have developed a novel, patent-pending process for 'spraying' solar cells and their related components onto glass which could provide significant commercial production advantages over today's thin-films.

Professor Yair Ein-Eli at the Technion - Israel Institute of Science has conducted research into a battery that lasts for thousands of hours and is based on silicon that reverts back to sand when it's spent.

Infinite Power Solutions (IPS), an industry leader in solid-state, thin-film energy storage and energy-harvesting power management products, today announced a global distribution agreement with Arrow Electronics, Inc. (NYSE:ARW), a leading global distributor of electronic components and solutions. Under the agreement, Arrow will distribute IPS' award-winning INFINERGY™ Micro Power Module (MPM) product family.

Electronics in textiles may be printed or wound using wires and there are other options, with over 100 organisations working in the field. It varies from the invisible to the fanciful.

At the IDTechEx Energy Harvesting and Storage conference in Denver Colorado in November, Dr Richard Waters, Advanced Circuits and Sensors Branch SPAWAR System Center Pacific, presented on optimization of a kinetic energy harvester for low amplitude vibration.