First 3D printed battery that is the size of a grain of sand

[Crisp]

Researchers create first 3D printed battery that is the size of a grain of sand and comparable to current commercial batteries.

 

Novel application of 3D printing could enable the development of miniaturized medical implants, compact electronics, tiny robots, and more

 

A research team from Harvard University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has demonstrated the ability to 3D print a battery.  This image shows the interlaced stack of electrodes that were printed layer by layer to create the working anode and cathode of a microbattery. (SEM image courtesy of Jennifer A. Lewis.)

 

Cambridge, Mass. ? June 18, 2013 ? 3D printing can now be used to print lithium-ion microbatteries the size of a grain of sand. The printed microbatteries could supply electricity to tiny devices in fields from medicine to communications, including many that have lingered on lab benches for lack of a battery small enough to fit the device, yet provide enough stored energy to power them.

 

To make the microbatteries, a team based at Harvard University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign printed precisely interlaced stacks of tiny battery electrodes, each less than the width of a human hair.

 

?Not only did we demonstrate for the first time that we can 3D-print a battery; we demonstrated it in the most rigorous way,? said Jennifer A. Lewis, senior author of the study, who is also the Hansj?rg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and a Core Faculty Member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. Lewis led the project in her prior position at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in collaboration with co-author Shen Dillon, an Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering there.

 

 

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[DocM]

3D / 4D printing / "additive manufacturing" is simply gong to revolutionize not only prototyping & manufacturing but electronics, medicine, construction and possibly food production too.

Hold on to yer seats kiddies, this is going to look like the post-1950's solid state electronics era with its own version of Moore's Law.