Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign developed new microbatteries out-powering even the best supercapacitors. These could drive new applications in radio communications and compact electronics, such as drones - the batteries are rechargeable and can charge 1,000 times faster than competing technologies!
"Any kind of electronic device is limited by the size of the battery – until now. We can reduce by a factor of 30 today's required size. Now we can think outside of the box. It's a new enabling technology. It's not a progressive improvement over previous technologies; it breaks the normal paradigms of energy sources. It's allowing us to do different, new things."
Exciting for us: in a near future, we could have 30 times the range for our drones in the same package, with ultra fast recharging times.
The National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research supported this work.
Comments
This clarifies that energy density is on par with li-on - no energy density breakthrough. However its still pretty cool. So long as you have a charge source with a suitable power capacity to charge at a very high rate these could very quickly overtake all other battery technology. Provided of course there isn't a significant increase in cost-density over li-on :-)
With these batteries, drones will be the least of their worries hehe...
Imagine, finally the power storage capabilities to create humanoid robots....
Shh!
There is no doubt that the next major breakthroughs for electronics will coincide with a new method of storing and releasing energy. Hopefully one of these new battery technologies will make it to our shelves before long. If I were an anti-drone crazy politician I would start working on regulating the batteries rather than the drones. Hopefully we don't see that day.