Power pad: Matted carbon nanotubes, shown here in a micrograph, form an energy-storing coating on ordinary paper.
Credit: Liangbing Hu
New publications, experiments and breakthroughs in materials--and what they mean.
Paper Battery
A dip in nanotube ink turns office paper into an electrode
Source: "Highly conductive paper for energy-storage devices"
Yi Cui et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106: 21490-21494
Results: Office paper dipped in carbon-nanotube ink becomes a strong, flexible, highly conductive material that can be incorporated into lightweight batteries (where it serves as a conductive layer) or high-energy capacitors called ultracapacitors (where it serves as an electrode). Used in ultracapacitors, the material stored more energy than previous electrode materials.
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