{"id":6200,"date":"2012-06-30T15:57:13","date_gmt":"2012-06-30T22:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cafe.foundation\/blog\/?p=6200"},"modified":"2014-02-12T15:00:04","modified_gmt":"2014-02-12T22:00:04","slug":"rice-thats-nice-and-lights-up-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cafe.foundation\/blog\/rice-thats-nice-and-lights-up-too\/","title":{"rendered":"Rice \u2013 That\u2019s Nice, and Lights Up, Too"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rice University announced the development of a spray-on (in this case airbrushed) coating<\/a> that stores electricity, a bit reminiscent of Stanford\u2019s paper battery<\/a> on which a coating could be applied to act as a battery. Mitsubishi has demonstrated a paint <\/a>that could act as an extremely thin-film solar cell, but Rice\u2019s technology shows promise.<\/p>\n

Five layers comprise the various components of a lithium-ion battery and can seemingly be applied to almost any surface, including in one demonstration, a beer stein – showing an intoxicating range of possibilities.<\/p>\n

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Rice's painted battery compared to conventional format<\/p><\/div>\n

But Pulickel Ajayan, materials science professor has more serious considerations. According to the University\u2019s news. \u00a0\u201cThis means traditional packaging for batteries has given way to a much more flexible approach that allows all kinds of new design and integration possibilities for storage devices,\u201d said Ajayan, Rice\u2019s Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and of chemistry. \u201cThere has been lot of interest in recent times in creating power sources with an improved form factor, and this is a big step forward in that direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first layer, one of several \u201coptimized stews\u201d uses purified single-wall carbon nanotubes as the positive current collector. The second, cathode layer, contains lithium cobalt oxide, carbon and ultrafine graphite (UFG) powder in a binder solution. The third layer is a polymer separator, while the fourth, anode layer, is a mix of lithium titanium oxide and UFG in a binder, and the fifth is the negative current collector, a \u201ccommercially available conductive copper paint, diluted with ethanol.\u201d<\/p>\n

The least active of all the layers, the separator, caused the most problems, peeling off the substrate until PMMA, or polymethyl methacrylate, a transparent thermoplastic, was added to provide \u201cstickiness.\u201d<\/p>\n