Energy Storage

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.

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.