A new disposable battery is made of paper and other sustainable materials and is activated with a...
Now one team has crafted a water-activated disposable battery made of paper and other sustainable materials.
"It's these small batteries that are big problems," says Dele Ogunseitan, a public health professor at the University of California, Irvine, and a green technology researcher and adviser for major technology companies, who was not involved in the development of the paper battery.
This week they published a paper in Scientific Reports describing a new water-activated paper battery they developed out of environmentally friendly materials.
The new paper battery has the same key components as standard batteries but packages them differently.
Like a typical chemical battery, it has a positively charged side called a cathode, a negatively charged side called an anode and a conductive material called an electrolyte between the two.
A traditional battery's components are encased in plastic and metal; in the new battery, the anode and cathode are inks printed onto the front and back of a piece of paper.
After the paper is moistened, it takes about 20 seconds for the battery to activate.
When the researchers rewet the paper, the battery produced 0.5 volt for more than an hour.
Although the researchers demonstrated that their battery could power an alarm clock, disposable paper batteries are unlikely to replace standard AAs on store shelves.
Crucially, Nyström says his team created the battery without compromising on sustainability criteria.