Small in size, big on power: New microbatteries a boost for electronics
http://news.illinois.edu/news/13/0416microbatteries_WilliamKing.html
I haven’t looked at the paper so don’t have an opinion on the actual technology, but the idea is grand. One of the limiting factors in energy storage has been speed of charge/discharge or total power tradeoffs. You could get fantastic speed with a capacitor and functionally infinite charge/discharge capability, but with a rather small amount of total power OR you could something with a lot of power but the charge/discharge was limited and the number of cycles quite finite. If this product can break out of this paradigm and give high power AND high charge/discharge (and one would like to hope it also includes a very high number of cycles) then we might be on the cusp of a huge change in world order. Of course, if the price is so astronomical that no one but NASA can afford to buy them (hello fuel cells!) then it won’t make no nevermind.
