Future battery - The Bendable..

It's a battery that looks like a piece of paper and can be bent or twisted, trimmed with scissors or molded into any shape needed. While the battery is only a prototype a few inches square right now, the researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute who developed it have high hopes for it in electronics and other fields that need smaller, lighter power sources.

Imagine printing batteries like a newspapers! That would be the ultimate goal. Unlike other batteries, it is an integrated device, not a combination of pieces. The battery uses paper infused with an electrolyte and carbon nanotubes that are embedded in the paper. The carbon nanotubes form the electrodes, the paper is the separator and the electrolyte allows the current to flow.

How the idea came about??

Students at Troy, N.Y., were the inspiration for the work. those students were working on methods to dissolve paper and cast it into membranes for use in dialysis machines. Meanwhile, students in RPI's materials science department were trying to make carbon nanotube composites using polymers.

The two groups got together and realized they could use paper instead of polymers and combine the two projects. And over about 18 months, the groups developed the projects, into a battery, a capacitor, which stores electricity and a combination of the two.

They sees potential uses in combination with solar cells, perhaps layers of the paper batteries that could store the electricity generated until it is needed.