But camera makers will still charge $80+ each for the batteries...

Battery made of paper charges up

Batteries made from plain copier paper could make for future energy
storage that is truly paper thin.

The approach relies on the use of carbon nanotubes - tiny cylinders of
carbon - to collect electric charge.

While small-scale nanotube batteries have been demonstrated before,
the plain paper approach lends itself to making larger devices more
cheaply.

The work, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, could lead to "paintable" energy storage.

Because of its structure of millions of tiny, interconnected fibres,
paper is a good candidate to hold on to carbon nanotubes, providing a
scaffold on which to build devices.

However, paper is also mechanically tough, and can be bent, curled or
folded, more than the metal or plastic surfaces that are currently
used or under development.

Good on paper

A team of researchers at Stanford University started with off-the-
shelf copier paper, painting it with an "ink" made of carbon
nanotubes.

The coated paper is then dipped in lithium-containing solutions and an
electrolyte to provide the chemical reaction that generates a
battery's electric current.

The paper acts to collect the electric charge from the reaction. Using
paper in this way could reduce the weight of batteries, typically made
with metal current collectors, by 20%.

The team's batteries are also capable of releasing their stored energy
quickly. That is a valuable characteristic for applications that need
quick bursts of energy, such as electric vehicles - although the team
has no immediate plans to develop vehicle batteries.

Liangbing Hu, lead author on the research, said the most important
aspect of the demonstration was that paper is an inexpensive and well-
understood material - making wider usage of the technology more
likely.

"Standard copier paper used in our everyday life can be a solution in
storing energy in a more efficient and cheap way," Dr Hu told BBC
News.

"The experienced technology developed in the paper industry over a
century can be transferred to improve the process and performance of
these paper-based devices."

The team says that adaptations to the technique in the future could
allow for simply painting the nanotube ink and active materials onto
surfaces such as walls.

They have even experimented with a number of textiles, paving the way
for batteries made largely of cloth.
Story from BBC NEWS:
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