Algae Being Used For Making Ultra-Thin Batteries |
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Algae come in great variety and are one of the most abundant life forms on the planet, so it would be very unpractical, not to find a use for them, even in today’s technologized world. But people have acknowledged the great potential of this organism, and after trying to develop a algae-based biofuel or building solar cells out of single-celled algae its time for the algaes to get involved in creating biodegradable batteries.
The search for more efficient, thin and lightweight electrical storage devices have brought scientists to entirley nonmetal materials, namely , which proved encouraging. But it had the same downside which most of today’s batteries have: their ability to store electricity expressed a downfall in time and use.
The breakthrough came from a green algae, called Cladophora. It grows along water coastlines but its known to have caused some , where it spread greatly and gave water a bad odor. For scientists from in Sweden however, it is precious. They discovered that it produces a unusual kind of cellulose, defined by a very large surface area, about 100 times of the cellulose found in paper. This property of the algae enabled researchers to greatly increase the amount of conducting polymers, thus proving an overall better electrical performance.
The new algae batteries they managed to create out of it are very thin, composed of 40-50 nm wide conducting polymer. Also, the environmentally-friendly battery can store up to 200 procent more charge than other conducting polymer batteries and it recharges in only 11 seconds! The algae-based ultra-thin battery has also overcome the problem of charge storage degradation over use. The results show only 6 procent losses in 100 charging cycles.
If the research gets the financial back it needs, the ultra-thin algae-based battery it is very likely that we will soon find them in flexible electronics, such as in clothing articles or packaging that lights up. They could really be a bless for the environment!
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Tags: algae, biodegradable, cellulose, charge, Cladophora, conducting polymer, electricity, Environment, environmentally-friendly, flexible, research, storage, ultra-thin battery, Uppsala University
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