New microbatteries set to revolutionise electronics?

Created by a team from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), the new microbatteries are just a few millimetres in size, but can be recharged 1,000 times faster than competing tech. The scientists' breakthrough involved finding a new way to integrate the anode and cathode at the microscale. Building on a novel fast charging cathode design created in-house, the UIUC team developed a matching anode and then found a way to integrate the two components to make a complete battery with superior performance. With so much power, the team believes the batteries could enable sensors or radio signals that broadcast 30x farther, or devices 30x smaller. Ultimately, the researchers envision the batteries being deployed in credit card sized smartphones that can be charged 'in seconds'. "Any kind of electronic device is limited by the size of the battery – until now," said Prof King. "Consider personal medical devices and implants, where the battery is an enormous brick, and it's connected to itty-bitty electronics and tiny wires. Now the battery is also tiny." King and his team are now working to integrate the batteries with other electronics components, and looking at how to make them in large quantities over large areas. "Now we can think outside of the box," commented graduate student James Pikul. "It's a new enabling technology. It's not a progressive improvement over previous technologies; it breaks the normal paradigms of energy sources. It's allowing us to do different, new things."