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Batteries/Lithium Manotechnology031001
Lithium manotechnology
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(Sept. 2003) University of Tulsa receives patent for method to make nanobatteries. Professor Dale Teeters and students Nina Korzhova and Lane Fisher have formulated a manufacturing process that can build, charge and test nanobatteries. The manufacturing process begins with an aluminum sheet that is placed in acid solution under an electric current, resulting in an aluminum oxide membrane. A honeycomb structure forms when the metal is dissolved. The pores are then filled with an electrolyte which is a plastic-like polymer. The filled pores are capped with electrodes , either ceramic or carbon particles.
Vital instruments in the process are a scanning electron microscope and an atomic force microscope, which can observe and manipulate particles as small as molecules and is used to charge the microscopic array of batteries. The microscope’s custom-made tip touches the electrode to charge and test the battery. (This custom tip is so tiny, being only two nanometers wide, that it cannot even be seen by an ordinary light microscope.)
The team has, to date, been able to develop batteries so minuscule that more than 40 can be lined up across the width of a hair.
Today, these batteries are in the laboratory producing about a millionth of a miliAmp, but in the future, they could be found as a power source for a computer or a medical device.
References: U.S. Patent 6,586,133 and Dewan, C. & Teeters, D., “Vanadia xerogel nanocathodes used in lithium microbatteries,” Journal of Power Sources, p.119-121, 310-315, 2002
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