Australia developing self-charging batteries

Strategic Elements subsidiary Australian Advanced Materials (AAM) will develop a self-charging battery technology through collaboration with the University of New South Wales and CSIRO.

The battery cells create electricity from humidity in the air or skin surface to self-charge themselves within minutes. No manual charging or wired power is required. They are created with a printable ink and are designed for use in Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

The battery ink will be developed by integrating significant existing ink formulation and printed electronics intellectual property from the company’s Nanocube Memory Ink technology with an advanced graphene oxide material.

SOR managing director, Charles Murphy, said the Nanocube Memory Ink technology has generated significant momentum for the company with projects such as the Automated Robotic Security Vehicle with US conglomerate Honeywell.

“Early stage results are extremely promising as we apply years of experience and intellectual property in electronic inks into the development of a Battery Ink that generates electricity from the environment,” he said.

The Nanocube Memory Ink is a transparent ink containing billions of nanometre scale particles. When printed onto a surface and assembled with electrodes they operate as computer memory.

Development of the Battery Ink at UNSW in the next 12 weeks is focused on materials engineering and optimisation of ink formulation, achieving scale up to large batch size of Battery Ink of at least 1L, and successful prototype connecting multiple battery cells producing at least 3.7 Volts.

Research and development will be conducted under the Australian Research Council part-funded collaboration between the company, UNSW and CSIRO, announced in July this year.

The expected outcomes of the project are new electronic materials for a wide range of uses in flexible electronics and significant advances in energy efficient data storage devices. IP and commercialisation rights remain with AAM.

Technological advancements and adoption of various IoT devices such as wearables, smart meters, various sensors and home automation products, are key reasons for driving growth in the battery market.

By: Caroline Tung

From:  https://www.manmonthly.com.au/news/australian-advanced-materials-create-self-charging-batteries/