Energy Storage

Brewer Science,® Inc., and SouthWest NanoTechnologies, Inc. (SWeNT), have received a $6.5M award under NIST's Technology Innovation Program (TIP). The funding is in support of research and development programs that focus upon methodologies to attain the cost-effective production of high-purity, high-quality metallic and semiconducting carbon nanotube (CNT) inks. These advancements will enable production of a wide variety of high-performing electronic devices incorporating CNTs.

Nexeon - a company formed following a breakthrough discovery made at Imperial College London - has revealed its plans to commercialise lithium-ion battery technology, a development which will lead to batteries with significantly higher energy density and longer lifetime between charges.

This article will explain some of the key properties of supercapacitors that design engineers creating energy harvesting circuits need to be aware of, and explore how to use supercapacitors in these circuits.

Dip an ordinary piece of paper into ink infused with carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires, and it turns into a battery or supercapacitor. Crumple the piece of paper, and it still works. Stanford researcher Yi Cui sees many uses for this new way of storing electricity.

The IDTechEx event Printed Electronics USA in San Jose CA December 1-4 retained its position as the world's largest gathering on the subject with 25% growth on the year before. 910 delegates flew in from 25 countries and there were 85 exhibitors, 100 presenters, 8 Masterclasses and many visits in Silicon Valley to centers of excellence in this "next big thing".

Researchers at the Institute for Chemistry and Technology of Materials have developed a new method that utilises silicon for lithium-ion batteries. Its storage capacity is ten times higher than the graphite substrate which has been used up to now, and promises considerable improvements for users.

A group of researchers led by George Gruner at the University of California, Los Angeles, has printed a supercapacitor for the first time.

Electronics and electrics are becoming ubiquitous, the devices appearing on and in higher and higher volume products including e-labels and e-packaging. This calls for different forms of battery, capacitor and other energy storage because priorities such as environmental credentials, thinness and compatibility with energy harvesting (eg. solar cells) come to the fore alongside life and cost.

Fairchild Semiconductor's MicroFET thin package helps designers avoid compromising their designs by providing them with an industry-leading low profile package. Working with design engineers and procurement managers, Fairchild developed an integrated P-Channel PowerTrench® MOSFET and Schottky diode, as a single-package solution to meet critical efficiency and thermal needs in battery charging and power-multiplexing applications.

The first cars looked like horse drawn carriages - suboptimal and using the design rules of the past. So it is with most printed electronics today. It is frequently burdened with old fashioned components like silicon chips, cylindrical capacitors, chip resistors and button batteries.

The second day of the hugely successful IDTechEx conferences in Denver started with a focus on photovoltaics, which has the biggest market share in energy harvesting technology today.

At the recent IDTechEx Energy Harvesting and Storage event in Denver, Arveni, a startup based near Grenoble, France, demonstrated a batteryless remote control.

EnOcean Alliance reaches milestone toward becoming an international standard.

This week the IDTechEx events Energy Harvesting & Storage and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) & RTLS took place in Denver, CO, USA. The event was attended by more than 290 attendees, with a brilliantly diverse spread of those through the value chain - from component suppliers to solution providers to many end users from different industries.

Infinite Power Solutions, Inc., a global leader in the development and manufacturing of solid-state, rechargeable, thin-film energy storage devices, formally unveiled its INFINERGY(TM) Micro Power Module products at the Energy Harvesting & Storage USA conference in Denver, Colorado.