Battery made of paper charges up

[UZMA AIRAJ]

Battery made of paper charges up

Batteries made from plain copier paper could make for future energy storage that is truly paper thin.

The approach relies on the use of carbon nanotubes - tiny cylinders of carbon - to collect electric charge.

While small-scale nanotube batteries have been demonstrated before, the plain paper approach lends itself to making larger devices more cheaply.

The work, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could lead to "paintable" energy storage.

Because of its structure of millions of tiny, interconnected fibres, paper is a good candidate to hold on to carbon nanotubes, providing a scaffold on which to build devices.

However, paper is also mechanically tough, and can be bent, curled or folded, more than the metal or plastic surfaces that are currently used or under development.