Magic idea: Conductive paint turns ordinary paper into a battery

A paper battery made of carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires can be used in portable devices; researchers claim that the new battery is disposable and can be made into various shapes according to the needs of different devices.

Yi Cui, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford University, and his team, who developed the battery, demonstrated that the conductive coating can be applied to various battery parts, including supercapacitors and cheap electrodes

; Cui said that the technology can be introduced into commercialization within a few years.

Cui said: "Paper can now be used as a substrate to make functional conductive electrodes." The conductive paper developed by his research team is coated with a special nano-ink solution containing carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires; this coating forms a one-dimensional structured film that adheres to the fibrous surface of the paper.

Bing Hu, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, used a special ink to coat ordinary paper, allowing the nanotubes in the ink to deposit on the surface of the paper to create a paper battery. The coated paper becomes a highly conductive energy storage component, which the researchers charged and used to start the LED. This battery can store a charge, which is better than a capacitor, but its current per unit of time performance is slightly inferior.

The researchers said that due to its high surface-to-volume ratio, this conductive paper can also be used as a supercapacitor for electric vehicles; or it can be used to form a large energy storage array to store

excess power from the power grid at night and then release the power for redistribution during the day.

According to the tests of Stanford researchers, this paper battery can be repeatedly charged and discharged up to 40,000 times, which is 10 times the performance of traditional lithium-ion batteries.