Energy Storage

In the last year, the burgeoning printed and thin film electronics industry has greatly enhanced its repertoire and changed its priorities, encompassing such things as rapid commercialisation of disposable and invisible electronics.

Scientists have created a new battery fuelled by air - with the potential for 10 times the storage capacity of conventional cells. This step-change in capacity could pave the way for a new generation of electric cars, mobile phones and laptops.

IDTechEx is in San Jose CA this week, and has attended a conference covering aspects of energy harvesting. Here are some of the highlights of company developments.

Some of the new electric cars generate at least some of their electric power from solar cells on the vehicle - In future, they may generate electricity in part from shock absorbers, transparent solar cells over windows and thermoelectrically from the engine and exhaust in hybrid.

Remotely rechargeable, the batteries gather energy from the environment, from sources such as vibrations and existing radio waves.

STMicroelectronics (STM), one of the world's leading semiconductor manufacturers, has announced a commercial agreement with Front-Edge Technology (FET), the California-based developer of next-generation rechargeable batteries, enabling ST to bring FET's NanoEnergy® ultra-thin lithium battery technology to a wide range of new markets and applications.

Some of the new electric cars generate at least some of their electric power from solar cells on the vehicle - In future, they may generate electricity in part from shock absorbers, transparent solar cells over windows and thermoelectrically from the engine and exhaust in hybrid.

Cymbet Corporation was recently awarded EE Times' 2009 Annual Creativity in Electronics (ACE) Award for the "Best Enabler for Green Engineering".

IDTechEx has published a new report on the energy storage for portable devices that will be needed for a huge number of existing and new applications.

This one day meeting at the Institute of Engineering and Technology in London was staged jointly with the Royal Society of Chemistry. Here we report on two of the lectures which concerned devices that will increasingly interface with energy harvesting - rechargeable batteries and supercapacitors.

Over 100 industry executives have already confirmed their participation for Thin Film Today's forthcoming Thin Film Solar Summit Europe, scheduled to take place in Berlin next month.

UPM Raflatac and Blue Spark Technologies partner to drive new battery assisted passive RFID research and product development

Usually, dispensing with any form of battery can give even longer life, lower cost, smaller size, greater reliability, convenience, labour saving and reduced environmental problems.

Nanotecture has developed microbatteries and supercapacitors aimed at markets such as boosting the flash in mobile phone cameras to take pictures farther away, audio buffering in mobile phones etc for higher quality sound and powered smart cards.

Nanotecture has developed microbatteries and supercapacitors aimed at markets such as boosting the flash in mobile phone cameras to take pictures farther away, audio buffering in mobile phones etc for higher quality sound and powered smart cards.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) engineers have created a kind of beltway that allows for the rapid transit of electrical energy through a well-known battery material, an advance that could usher in smaller, lighter batteries for cell phones and other devices that could recharge in seconds rather than hours.

Researchers have been able to prove the existence of a "spin battery," a battery that is "charged" by applying a large magnetic field to nano-magnets in a device called a magnetic tunnel junction.

The Fraunhofer Research Institution for Electronic Nano Systems (Chemnitz, Germany) demonstrated their innovative printed battery in Tokyo last month.