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Paper-thin Batteries Made from Algae

Imagine wrapping paper that could be a gift in and of itself because it lights up with words like "Happy Birthday." That is one potential application of a new biodegradable battery made of cellulose, the stuff of paper.

Scientists worldwide are striving to develop thin, flexible, lightweight, inexpensive, environmentally friendly batteries made entirely from nonmetal parts. Among the most promising materials for these batteries are conducting polymers.

However, until now these have impractical for use in batteries — for instance, their ability to hold a charge often degrades over use.

Easy to make

The key to this new battery turned out to be an often bothersome green algae known as Cladophora. Rotting heaps of this hairlike freshwater plant throughout the world can lead to unsightly, foul-smelling beaches.

This algae makes an unusual kind of cellulose typified by a very large surface area, 100 times that of the cellulose found in paper. This allowed researchers to dramatically increase the amount of conducting polymer available for use in the new device, enabling it to better recharge, hold and discharge electricity.

"We have long hoped to find some sort of constructive use for the material from algae blooms and have now been shown this to be possible," said researcher Maria Strømme, a nanotechnologist at Uppsala University in Sweden. "This creates new possibilities for large-scale production of environmentally friendly, cost-effective, lightweight energy storage systems."

The new batteries consisted of extremely thin layers of conducting polymer just 40 to 50 nanometers or billionths of a meter wide coating algae cellulose fibers only 20 to 30 nanometers wide that were collected into paper sheets.

"They're very easy to make," Strømme said.

Quick to charge

They could hold 50 to 200 percent more charge than similar conducting polymer batteries, and once better optimized, they might even be competitive with commercial lithium batteries, the researchers noted. They also recharged much faster than conventional rechargeable batteries — while a regular battery takes at least an hour to recharge, the new batteries could recharge in anywhere from eight minutes to just 11 seconds.

The new battery also showed a dramatic boost in the ability to hold a charge over use. While a comparable polymer battery showed a 50 percent drop in the amount of charge it could hold after 60 cycles of discharging and recharging, the new battery showed just a 6 percent loss through 100 charging cycles.

"When you have thick polymer layers, it's hard to get all the material to recharge properly, and it turns into an insulator, so you lose capacity," said researcher Gustav Nyström, an electrochemist at Uppsala University. "When you have thin layers, you can get it fully discharged and recharged."

Flexible electronics

The researchers suggest their batteries appear well-suited for applications involving flexible electronics, such as clothing and packaging.

"We're not focused on replacing lithium ion batteries — we want to find new applications where batteries are not used today," Strømme told LiveScience. "What if you could put batteries inside wallpaper to charge sensors in your home? If you could put this into clothes, can you couple that with detectors to analyze sweat from your body to tell if there's anything wrong?"

Future directions of research include seeing how much charge these batteries lose over time, a problem with polymer batteries and all batteries in general. They also want to see how much they can scale up these batteries, "see if we can make them much, much larger," Strømme said.

The scientists detailed their last month in the journal Nano Letters.

Sweetdoct247:
@blackweaver
Yea I did that and d lapi is now working well both on battery and when plugged to mains. Thanks a million.
Another thing however is the sound. It's not working but when I connect an external sound card and connect a speaker it works well, what could be d cause of that? The inbuilt speakers are ok, I've tested them. I just changed the windows from xp to vista premium and have had a sound driver installed so I dont know why it's still not working.
The system also came with an inbuilt bluetooth but ever since I've changed the windows I've not been able to use it, I tried to install the bluetooth driver that came with it but it's saying it's incompatible with d version of windows what can I do? Thanks

Did you upgrade or install a new operating system. If you installed a new operating system and you've deleted your windows xp, you will have to download the drivers or install it from the original dvd your pc came with. As for the bluetooth stuff, windows vista automatically installs bluetooth devices but you may not be seeing it. Are you sure the switch is on on your laptop. If you are sure, try typing this in your run window:
'bthprops.cpl' without the quotes. If it brings out a window where you can see your bluetooth configuration, then the driver is installed. Just configure it to always show on your tray. If it's not showing, open device manager (run 'devmgmt.msc') without the quotes and confirm whether it is installed. iF there's an item showing with a question mark, then one or more of the system's drivers are not installed. Just give me a feedback and I'll find links for you.

nearest:
The icons on my desktop are permanently highlighted, how can i un-highlight them?

Are u on XP or vista. If you are on XP then follow the following steps:
> Right click on the Desktop and select 'Arrange Icons By'
> Make sure that a check mark is not by 'Lock Web Items on Desktop'.
> Then right click on the Desktop and select Properties.
> Then click Desktop tab > Customize Desktop button> Web tab>
> make sure that nothing is checked in the Web pages: windows and that Lock web items is not checked.

Then type sysdm.cpl in your run window and press enter.
Go to Advanced Tab > Performance Settings
> Check use drop shadows. Click ok.

H2O2:
LMAO @ Do Nigerians download.

I filled up a 1 tera external hard drive in a span of less than 2 days.

1,000,000 / 48 - ? = 23800 MB. In 1 hr, you download 23GB of data? That's quite interesting. New sata hard drives operate at 1GBps so is someone trying to say your HD got overworked? I don't think so. But my friend, I understand what you did. Your 1TB hard disk which had about 2GB of space left got filled after two days and crashed due to disk errors and over-fragmentation

Formatting is not that much of a big deal. Why do you want to format your PC? Is there any specific problems you are having with installing a new operating system? Be precise.

iice:
[color=#9900ff]Woman definitely And why impressive? Women don't type much?
Ahhhhh the shadow of death is always upon someone or something [/color]

So you are the angel of this death Well there's an article I read recently that women are being pushed of the top computer technical knowledge chart. Men are geeks but women are not

The problem of Nigeria cannot be solved coz Moderators will always be moderators

Dual Core:
My brain dey run on low battery now, if not i for talk.

Well, I know quite well that windows vista copied linux and stardock's tools. The windows 7 was a perfect mix of tools used by others. The new taskbar is similar to the ice explorer shell. Anyway, I love the current brain-behind coz he is resourceful. Send-Feedback = Powerful Tool
All the same I use windows 7
If you can't beat them. . . join them!!!

Site: Facebook-like
Server: 300 GB bandwidth
Monthly budget?

@joeblaq: just type the following in your run window. "reg delete HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies" without the quotes and confirm by pressing y and enter. That's all! It'll enable both your registry and task manager.

Yeah. Kudos to microsoft
But why are they copying so much

Sawyerrken:
I think we are trying.

You uploaded those images
Anyway, my friend wants a lone server for his new site. What can you do for him?

@iice: Very impressive for a girl/woman
Lol at The bones of our foes will gleam under the sun But who is this shadow of death upon

Have you been attacked by a virus? Are you thinking about reformatting your pc? Have you documents become corrupted? There's still hope for you! You don't need to format that PC whether it is booting or not. Post your malware problems here and get them solved .https://www.anchoredbygrace.com/smileys/loki8.gif

Sweetdoct247:
Good day 2 you all. I need help with my system. Anytime I try to boot it up with the battery attached it never boots beyond "type your password". It doesn't matter if it is plugged to the mains or not it occurs as long as the battery is in place. If however I remove the battery and plug the lapi to the adaptor it works perfectly well. The funny thing is that if I remove the battery and boot it up plugged to the adaptor, if I now insert the battery whatever I'm doing on the system hangs at that point and I will have to remove the battery and reboot without it. Any ideas? This one wey lapi wan turn desk top I dont understand.

I think your battery drivers might be having some problems or something you installed is causing a conflict. Try and boot in safe mode and give us a feedback

Evans4hetty:
hello
pls i need windows product key for vista,i use dell inspiron e1405.i ve just 3 days left your irgent reply n assistance will be very appreciated .
evans

Send me your email at tellpatacee@yahoo.com

NLand is good after all. But am still surprised the board rules are not present. The spam bot is somehow not so good coz I think it checks the amount of words you typed under a number of seconds and the number of external links too. Sometimes it is more convenient to type in notepad first before posting something here. A better way to confront spamming should be a human verification check. By the way a random key is generated when you want to reply. Security and usability are two great issues that should be considered properly both in software and web technologies.

More are coming. I just can't keep updating people. By the way where do you stay Blackweaver?

@opes
Brand new?? I wonder what happened. Did you actually reformat it. If you did. Did the computer somehow fall down. Try booting your system using an xp cd. Then try to repair using the recovery console. instead of install windows xp now. on the command prompt. CHeck your disk using chkdsk /f /r C:
if an error occurs then it's not seeing your hard drive
Then Try fixmbr
after that try chkdsk /f /r C: again. If it runs, restart your system and try booting again.
Also try and check if your hard disk is detected from your BIOS. Goodluck

You'll know what's wrong with it when you have more than 3000 friends

Indeed
That is foolish!
You cannot use only reason in religion. It relies on faith and belief!

What is your question?

Please just tell me what I have done wrong by trying to share knowledge among Nigerians. Looks like I'll have to open my site what is the meaning of all this!!!!!
I have a sense of justice and I respect those who respect justice. I'm sure you extracted the info, or is it that you want to be the only one that read what I pasted!??

Okay for instance, if you compare the number of catholics in a certain area of portharcourt which attend church on sunday with the number of people who do so in remote areas you will find out they are far more greater. Nsukka for example has about 15 catholic churches which most overflood on sundays. I know that it is not so in developed areas

Ednut, you are the typical new generation and never believe everyone else is like you. Instead pray that you become wiser by agreeing to become a fool.

Interesting. I see someone not interested in the truth but in arguments. There are two kinds of statements, one that is made on general assumption and intuition and one that is made based on statistics. I've told you for the sake of giving you information. It's up to you to find out how credible the information is

You're welcome!

USB antivirus is failing too. Almost everyone who has it has this recycler virus in his/her system. I have written a small tool to remove the stubborn thing. WIll get back later!

Maybe you should do a research yourself and tell me. There are poor places in Lagos quite alright but all the same, I bet you will find more faith in poorer cities! Remember the poor widow who gave all she had!

Then continue to wallow in your ignorance. A religion that abuses morality and human rights, and claims to be a holy religion. Hypocrites and pedophiles! That's what it has since I think you are the most devoted muslim. If the most devoted muslims are like you, then there is no hope for y'all. Morality is essential in every religion!