The battery's dead: Scientists invent wafer-thin plastic that can store electricity

Daily Mail (UK) ^ | 2/6/10 | David Derbyshire

[ruralvoter]

The battery, which has powered our lives for generations, may soon be consigned to the dustbin of history.

British scientists say they have created a plastic that can store and release electricity, revolutionising the way we use phones, drive cars - and even wear clothes.

It means the cases of mobiles and iPods could soon double up as their power source - leading to gadgets as thin as credit cards.

[Terpfen]

Every few months we get a story about new battery or battery replacement technology and it never goes anywhere.

Zzzzz.

[GrannyAnn]

Plastic? Can’t use plastic. Plastic comes from big bad oil. No No No....not plastic.

[Britt0n]

Ping

[driftdiver]

How much of a charge can it hold. There are stories of paper based batteries as well. Don’t see those in my cell phone.

[Ron C.]

Not a new battery invention!

It's not a battery - it's just a capacitor using new material and capacitor-held energy can be quite dangerous.

This isn't going to fly any better than prior capacitive storage schemes to replace batteries.

[Pontiac]

Dr Emile Greenhalgh, from Imperial College London's Department of Aeronautics, said the material is not really a battery, but a supercapacitor - similar to those found in typical electrical circuits.

This could be great. No more nasty heavy metals like Cadmium going in to land fills.

[dfwgator]

"It's only 'wafer thin.'"

[Mr_Moonlight]

The battery's dead: Scientists invent wafer-thin plastic that can store electricity

Catchy headline -- but a battery, no matter what its chemical composition or whether it produces or stores electricity, is still called a battery ....

[DGHoodini]

I’ll believe it when I see them on the store shelves.

[OldDeckHand]

"It's not a battery - it's just a capacitor using new material and capacitor-held energy can be quite dangerous. "

Precisely. Capacitors are the primary reason that people who are not very familiar with electrical circuits should NEVER remove the back back of high-energy electronics, like televisions.

[Ken H]

It will have to undergo a battery of tests before marketing.

[Blood of Tyrants]

It is actually not a battery but a capacitor.

[Bob]

His team's prototype - which is around five inches square and wafer-thin - takes five seconds to charge from a normal power supply and can light an LED for 20 minutes.

Assuming a 10-milliamp load from the LED, a 20-minute run time for this device equates to a capacity of:

10 mA * 0.333 hours = 3.333 mAh

For comparison, a common non-rechargeable alkaline AA battery typically has a capacity of about 2700 mAh.

[henkster]

I remember back in the 70’s “futurists” were claiming we would be eating food made from plastic.

[dr_who]

Plus there are toxins in plastic that could KILL someone after approximately 77 years of prolonged exposure.

[1000 silverlings]

They are, arn’t they? The cheese on pizzas, it’s either plastic or dirt now

[grey_whiskers]

Like, *PING*, folks.

Cheers!

[visualops]

five inches square and wafer-thin

I used to have a bunch of those...they went in a slot on the keyboard..

[henkster]

Oh, you mean the “pasteurized processed cheese food composed of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil.” Yeah, I see what you mean.

Oh well, I’ll just pour me a whiskey and “carbonated flavored beverage sweetened with high fructose corn syrup.”

[1000 silverlings]

http://www.themilkweed.com/Feature_06_Jan.pdfHut’s cheese supplier—Leprino Foods—

uses a silicone-based industrial chemical in the patented manufacturing of “Pizza Cheese.” That chemical—Polymethylsiloxane—has no FDA approval for use as a food ingredient. Polymethylsiloxane is sold by Dow-Corning as “Antifoam FG 10”.

[grey_whiskers]

Like, *PING*, folks.

Cheers!

[aquila48]

This is a non-event... as one of the comments following the story points out...

“1) As many people have stated, this is a supercapacitor. They’ve been around for decades, and they’re an American invention.

2) There’s no way this is the end of the battery - batteries can be made just as thin and have hundreds and potentially thousands of times the energy density of this supercapacitor. Powering a standard LED for 20 minutes requires a very small amount of energy - a mobile phone battery would keep the same LED lit for at least two days, and they’re a fair bit smaller than 5 inches square. How is a supercapacitor ever going to power a mobile phone/iPod? A battery is the only way forward for a low current application.

3) This is being reported as if it’s a scientific invention - it’s not, it just seems to be an engineering group making thin-film supercaps to stick in car door panels or something like that. It’s barely even news!

For the record, I work in a research group specialising in batteries and supercaps.

- Matt, Southampton, 06/2/2010 17:16”

[truthguy]

Every few months we get a story about new battery or battery replacement technology and it never goes anywhere.
Zzzzz

My thoughts exactly. You beat me to it.

These newspapers (if I can still use the word paper) get their stories from the scientific and technical journals and most of the people at the news organizations are scientifically and technically illiterate. They don't read the fine print and find that many of these are advances are in the infancy stages and they rarely pan out.

The research universities have a policy where their professors must publish material so they can stay on the faculty and get research money. So they publish a lot of wishful thinking. I've been reading these studies for 20 or more years and 99% of them are bunk. If I had a nickle for every over exaggerated story about energy breakthroughs I've read I could go for early retirement. If on the extremely rare occasion I'm wrong and this is significant, then I'll be the happiest guy around. I'm just getting tire of all the wolf calls.

[edzo4]

I’m not impressed nature makes electricity(lightning) by mixing warm air and cold air, if they ever come up with a way to do that, then Ill be impressed

[Cringing Negativism Network]

I want the patent on the adapter to fit these new flat plastic batteries retroactively, into every AA battery device in existence...

[tflabo]

Waiting for the perfect transducer invention—that is where cold weather causes it to emit heat wavelets and in hot weather it releases cold instead. Tiny transducers aligning the peripheral walls of buildings would be fantastic and never needing electrical AC power to operate or sustain.

[dangus]

Really? You’re putting coppertops in your cell phone?

[Fresh Wind]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA25ghMAyak

[dangus]

Well, that’s probably why it’s not going to market as is. Looking at the photo, I’m suspecting they’re expecting to use microchip technology to dramatically shrink the size of the “capacitor paper.”

[Terpfen]

Congratulations, you’ve won today’s 30,000 Feet Award for allowing the substance of the post you’ve quoted to fly over your head!

[catnipman]

Every few months we get a story about new battery or battery replacement technology and it never goes anywhere.

Zzzzz.

So you've noticed that too, hey? Indeed, these wunderbat announcements have been going on for at least 20 years now. If you bother to follow any of these initial announcements, the companies always crash and burn because "we're still working out the problems of commercial production". This happens every time! After multiple rounds of investment financing, the investments eventually dry up and the company goes out of business, presumably with the principals considerably richer in some fashion or other.

At this point, I think the whole wonderbat thing is just a very popular scam to fleece investors.

[tang-soo]

It’s minty fresh!

[neverdem]

thanks, bfl

[dangus]

Yeah. I know.

[dalereed]

British con artists looking for idiots to fund them!

[1010RD]

I feel like I am going to explode.

[1010RD]

Well, we do eat food made from chemicals.

[1010RD]

Source, please.

[1010RD]

In the Matrix, you are the coppertop!

[dangus]

more like a daywalker than a ginger

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks grey_whiskers. Obviously this plastic will destroy the climate and our civilization, and must be banned.

[dr_who]

Yes, I actually did make that up. And if that doesn’t satisfy you, I thought it up all by myself. Does that make you feel better?

[LomanBill]

>>It’s not a battery - it’s just a capacitor using new material

Bingo.

[1010RD]

I thought someone with the screen name dr who would get sarcasm. I was just kidding. It is obvious you made it up.

[dr_who]

Well, I thought that you thought that...oh, nevermind. HA! HA! Ha! Ha.