Megan Treacy on Treehugger reports on a new twist – low-power batteries that self-destruct after usage:
Having a battery that is able to break down at the end of the life gets us one step closer to a device that could basically disappear when its job is done.
Researchers at Iowa State University have developed a battery that quickly destructs when dropped in water. The lithium ion battery can produce 2.5 volts and can power a desktop calculator for about 15 minutes. When submerged in water, it dissipates in just 30 minutes. The university says this is the first so-called “transient” battery to have the power, stability and shelf life needed for practical use.
“Unlike conventional electronics that are designed to last for extensive periods of time, a key and unique attribute of transient electronics is to operate over a typically short and well-defined period, and undergo fast and, ideally, complete self-deconstruction and vanish when transiency is triggered,” the scientists wrote in their paper just published in theJournal of Polymer Science, Part B: Polymer Physics.
“Vanish”? I could understand the blogger saying that, but she’s quoting the paper. Megan explains further:
When submerged, the casing swells and breaks apart the electrodes, then dissolves away. The researchers stressed that there are nanoparticles that don’t completely disappear, but they do disperse.
It’s an interesting thought. I’m trying to see how to implement it safely in a health environment, and really the only process close to fail-safe would be for it to dissolve once the energy it generates is exhausted. You can’t do it on command, because that makes you vulnerable to malicious forces; basing it on environmental factors in a body seems impractical, since the environment, at least this level, would seem to me to be relatively static – but I don’t really have any relevant expertise.
