Swedish paper stores electricity – New Technology

       

The black plate feels like plastigt paper, is one tenth of a millimeter thick, can be folded – and storing as much electrical charge that ultracapacitors market. To download the material takes a couple of seconds, and can be up to hundreds of times.

How to describe a group of researchers at the Laboratory of Organic Electronics at Linköping University, Campus Norrköping, a new material of nano-cellulose and conductive polymer. In a scientific article in the Advanced Science describe their “power paper” which takes four world records:

• The highest charge and capacitance in organic electronics, 1 C and 2 C.
• The highest current in an organic conductor 1A.
• The maximum ability to simultaneously manage both ions and electrons.
• The maximum transconductance (change of the amperage depending on the electric voltage) of a transistor , 1 S.

Xavier Crispin is a professor of organic electronics and one of the authors of the article. He says that the thin films that function as capacitors have been before.

– What is new is that we have managed to manufacture the material in three dimensions and create thick plates. The thickness explains the good electrical properties, said Xavier Crispin.

The material made of nano-cellulose fibers as thin as 20 nm in diameter. The fibers are placed in an aqueous solution, and an electrically conductive polymer (PEDOT: PSS) is applied. Then fold polymer as a thin film around the fibers, and it is the polymer film which conduct electrons efficiently. At the same time formed small voids among the fibers inside the film, and in these cavities is liquid left. The fluid acts as the electrolyte, which explains the good conductivity for ions. Since energy must be paper dewatered and dried before it can be used in the same way as when the pulp is dried to paper.

The researchers see three possible uses : supercapacitors, högeffektstransistorer and as carriers of battery electrodes, together with other materials.

– Batteries is the application we proceed now, said Xavier Crispin.

One of the challenges is to scale up production to an industrial scale. The researchers together with KTH, Acreo and Innventia received 34 million from the Foundation for Strategic Research to develop a paper on energy paper.

Among co-authors of the article in the Advanced Science is also a researcher at KTH, Innventia, Technical University of Denmark and University of Kentucky. Project Power papers have since 2012 received funding from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.

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