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micro-supercapacitors
by using lasers to burn electrodes into
sheets of plastic.While too expensive to bring to market at this
point, the resulting product could charge 50 times as fast as
current batteries. Battery engineering is also moving towards
nontraditional power sources. Scientists at Stanford University
have developed an aluminumgraphite battery that can reach full
charge in just one minute. The company Prieto has developed
a battery made out of a
copper foam substrate
. The batteries
are safer, since there are no flammable components, they are
fast-charging, and they carry five times the power density of
the typical lithium-ion battery. They are also cheap to manu-
facture. Meredith Perry invented the uBeam, which can charge
your cell phone over the air. The uBeam transmits ultrasound
waves emitted from a five-millimeter plate through the air to
your smartphone, which captures the beam and transfers it to
usable electricity to charge its battery.
Engineers are working on even more fantastic ways to charge
batteries rapidly and cheaply. Current experimental designs
have been powered by radio waves, dew, sand, salt, hydrogen,
solar energy, and even urine. But that’s not all. The future of
smartphone battery technology may be having no battery at all.
Researchers at Queen Mary University of London have found
a way to harness the power of sound to charge a smartphone.
The scientists built a device covered with “nanogenerators” that
collect sound vibrations and turn them into electrical currents.
In experiments, the developers learned that traffic noise, music,
and even human voices could trigger the electrical current in
the phone, providing up to five volts of power.
Engineering and Information Technology
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