You can now 3D print lithium-ion batteries in any shape.
Lithium-ion batteries are normally either cylindrical or rectangular shaped, which forces manufacturers to dedicate a certain size and place for the battery in its design. This way of making electronic devices such as laptops and mobile phones may cause a waste of both space and options to branch out with design.
InACS Applied Energy Materials, researchers present their method of 3D printing which can create the whole structural device, including the battery and with all the electronic components – in almost any shape.
Since the polymers used for printing, like poly(lactic acid) (PLA) are not ionic conductors, the researchers infused PLA with an electrolyte solution as well as adding graphene into the anode or cathode to boost the battery’s electrical conductivity.
Showing the capacity of the printed battery, the team printed a bracelet with an integrated battery. As of now, the battery could only power the green LED for approximately 60 seconds – making the battery circa two orders of magnitude lower than already commercially available batteries. Although this makes the battery capacity too low to use at the moment, the researchers have multiple ideas to fix the low capacity such as, replacing the PLA materials with 3D printable pastes.
Introducing a simple step to the production of plant-derived, biodegradable plastic could improve its properties while overcoming obstacles to manufacturing it commercially, says new research from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Jiangnan University.
That step? Bringing the heat
Nebraska’s Yiqi Yang and colleagues found that raising the temperature of bio-plastic fibers to several hundred degrees Fahrenheit, then slowly allowing them to cool, greatly improved the bio-plastic’s normally lackluster resistance to heat and moisture.
Its thermal approach also allowed the team to bypass solvents and other expensive, time-consuming techniques typically needed to manufacture a commercially viable bio-plastic, the study reported.
Yang said the approach could allow manufacturers of corn-derived plastic – such as a Cargill plant in Blair, Nebraska – to continuously produce the biodegradable material on a scale that at least approaches petroleum-based plastic, the industry standard. Recent research estimates that about 90 percent of U.S. plastic goes unrecycled.
